All Blog Posts Tagged 'Science' - Think Atheist2015-03-03T20:59:10Zhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profiles/blog/feed?tag=Science&xn_auth=noCausing Offencetag:www.thinkatheist.com,2013-07-12:1982180:BlogPost:13509572013-07-12T17:29:05.000ZCarnun Marcus-Pagehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/CarnunMarcusPage
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<dt class="wp-caption-dt"><a href="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/hair-trigger.png"><img alt="Hair Trigger" class="size-medium wp-image-1780" height="381" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/hair-trigger.png?w=300" width="451"></img></a></dt>
<dd class="wp-caption-dd"><span class="font-size-1">Picture courtesy of <a href="http://www.worth1000.com/contests/9726/visual-puns-3">http://www.worth1000.com/contests/9726/visual-puns-3</a>, used without permission.</span></dd>
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<blockquote><p>"While I don't…</p>
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<dt class="wp-caption-dt"><a href="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/hair-trigger.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1780" alt="Hair Trigger" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/hair-trigger.png?w=300" height="381" width="451"/></a></dt>
<dd class="wp-caption-dd"><span class="font-size-1">Picture courtesy of <a href="http://www.worth1000.com/contests/9726/visual-puns-3">http://www.worth1000.com/contests/9726/visual-puns-3</a>, used without permission.</span></dd>
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<blockquote><p>"While I don't condone the behaviour of 'dick atheists', I can empathise with their frustrations. I'd like to think I'm not one, but I'm not prepared... to compromise my intellectual integrity to avoid causing offence. And I will not tell my students lies about the world just because it might be what their religious parents would like me to do." - Alom Shaha, The Young Atheist's Handbook</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I strongly feel, as I have a lot lot of reason to assume Alom does, that the teaching of science to children owes no censorship of its core ideas and historic developments to the chance of religious offence. Science is, and likely always will be, the best method we have of comprehending reality - and children have a right to know.</p>
<p>However, as I'm sure each and every reader is aware, there are some who feel that a parent's right to deny their children a decent education overrides this. Allow me to offend them:<img class="mce-wp-more" title="More..." alt="" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.wordpress.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif"/></p>
<p>Home-schooling a child, for example, with extremely conservative creationist material (like the infamous 'Accelerated Christian Education' stimulus <em>Jonny Scaramanga</em> lived through and now writes about over at '<a href="http://leavingfundamentalism.wordpress.com/">Leaving Fundamentalism</a>') not only infringes upon what I feel to be their own <em>human</em> <em>right</em> to a decent education (and exposure to information), but has the potential to harm both their mental health and even job prospects.</p>
<p>When everyone at University (with vastly superior qualifications) is <em>doomed for hell</em> in your eyes it can get pretty lonely. And when 'evolution' is a swear-word, it's very hard to be a biologist.</p>
<p>Tell this to a well-meaning fundamentalist Christian parent and you won't get very far though. There's a time and place for (often misrepresented) 'firebrand Atheism', and the issue of education - as it deals with the sensitivities of parents - may need to be approached a tad more carefully than simply telling people they may be ruining their children's lives.</p>
<p>But, and this is very important to reiterate time and time again, the possibility of offending is alone no reason to keep quiet. Some set their 'what offends me' lower limits so sensitively that the very concept of free speech altogether would be threatened if their inability to accept criticism were taken seriously... Only that is often is.</p>
<p>Rampant in countries such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, 'blasphemy' charges are all to liberally handed out for such petty offences as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23112180">*allegedly* burning pages of the Qur'an</a> or <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/07/australian-sentenced-lashes-saudi-arabia">*allegedly* insulting the prophet Muhammad</a> - often with severe physical punishments as the first port of call. The bottom line, from the point of view of secular ethics and Humanism, is that no matter how sacredly millions hold notions of a long dead paedophile, personal offence does not warrant violence towards anyone exercising their deserved freedom of expression (especially when it's reasonable, but even when it's not).</p>
<p>(And yes, that was meant to be provocative to make a small point.)</p>
<p>I recognise that, in many cases, it's hardly productive, as it may be to tell a parent they're <em>doing it wrong</em>, to speak with such intentional confrontational passion. I don't consider myself to be a so-called 'dick Atheist', but there is a balance all of us must draw between what's seen as 'politically correct' (I use the term loosely) and our outward sincerity. That said, I see no reason to pick fights where they need not be fought - and so, for example, I wouldn't seek out a Muslim friend just to criticise Muhammad in front of them. In Islam's case, like many other faiths (but certainly more so), my fight, for the sake of the victims, is with the religion's numerous cancerous teachings and the fundamentalists who seek to impose them on the world. Not Muslims.</p>
<p>Of course, if the topic comes up in conversation I will speak honestly - but I see no need to use language reserved for the likes of the Pope when in the company of friends.</p>
<p>Which, even when directed solely at ideas themselves, still sets people off. Perhaps on the smallest of hair-triggers too - which, while it can be annoying (to say the least), is fine. When I say/write something publicly, everyone who comes into contact with it has the right to legitimately and intellectually criticise it. The only place a thought I have is safe from judgement is in my own brain, and rightly so.</p>
<p>I just wish that others would feel the same, because it's funny how often something like this happens in public discussion (especially in America):</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Person A: I think that black people are inferior.</strong></p>
<p>Person B: That's terrible! I think you're wrong, and a bigot.</p>
<p><strong>Person A: I CAN SAY WHAT I WANT! I HAVE THE RIGHT TO 'FREEDOM OF SPEECH' AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME OTHERWISE - I'M NOT A BIGOT!!!</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>And they never see the irony...</p>
<p>I think the point I'm trying to make (albeit in an unnecessarily roundabout way) is that it's perfectly fine to be occasionally labelled an arrogant, offensive, patronising 'dick Atheist' because if you're vocal about it <em>at all</em> there's bound to be someone who disagrees with you passionately and lazily enough - at even the smallest detail - to throw the supposed insult your way. All you should be concerned about is trying to prove them wrong in day-toady life by being anything but... If it worries you.</p>
<p>Carnun :P</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>(Reposted from '<a href="http://wp.me/p2VbGO-sH" target="_blank">The Ramblings of a Young Atheist</a>' by the Author.)</p>Richard Feynman - My Kind of Scientisttag:www.thinkatheist.com,2013-07-05:1982180:BlogPost:13479322013-07-05T21:16:05.000ZCarnun Marcus-Pagehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/CarnunMarcusPage
<address><a href="http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1219782432p8/1429989.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1219782432p8/1429989.jpg?width=270" width="270"></img></a></address>
<p>I've been meaning to write a 'love letter' to this man for a while, so here it is.</p>
<p>I'll begin with a quote:</p>
<p><em>“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for…</em></p>
<address><a target="_blank" href="http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1219782432p8/1429989.jpg"><img class="align-left" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1219782432p8/1429989.jpg?width=270" width="270"/></a></address>
<p>I've been meaning to write a 'love letter' to this man for a while, so here it is.</p>
<p>I'll begin with a quote:</p>
<p><em>“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”</em> - Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988).</p>
<p>And this, my friends, is the definition of open-mindedness.</p>
<p>Note, in the quote there is not a shred of talk on accepting an unlikelihood outright and without evaluation - what Feynman hit on in it was an appreciation of healthy <em>scientific skepticism</em>. For him, new 'facts' only earned the title after significant evidence for their supposed relevance, and he understood the <em>certainty</em> that there's simply so much we don't know at present. So, instead of placing his bets with one side or the other on particular issues, he was, when alive, more than happy to sit on the fence until 'his bets' were again earned through the overwhelming likelihood solid observational evidence brings to a proposition.</p>
<p>And if this evidence never turned up, so what? The process, to him, was what was truly enthralling, and thoughts could be imaginatively and delightfully entertained without acceptance.<img class="mce-wp-more" title="More..." alt="" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.wordpress.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif"/></p>
<p>Uncertainty, he felt, for this reason, was exciting. Once a person, a scientist, is <em>sure</em>, they run the risk of falling into an outlook of complacency and wilful ignorance - a position which Feynman, perhaps more so than others, realised ran antithetically to the curiosity science needs to keep its cutting edge sharp.</p>
<p>Because science, for him, was never the dry, emotionless white-coat data-gathering of perhaps the public's eye - it was an endeavour which only strengthened even an aesthetic appreciation of reality, like the Artist may wish to achieve (and even possibly more so).</p>
<p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/zSZNsIFID28?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0"></iframe>
</p>
<blockquote><p>Transcript*:<br/> <em>“I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Don't you all just love the smile at "nutty"?</p>
<p>There are times, listening to Feynman's Youtube-immortalised speech or reading his writing, when I notice just how genuinely he, as a person, found science utterly (and almost 'childishly') fascinating and wonderful. I can't help but feel it's a big part of what made him so likeable.</p>
<p>And I say 'part', because there's more of course. While still on the <em>art</em> theme, it's worth noting that Feynman became quite the 'accomplished draughtsman' himself, thanks to the help of the 'friend' he mentioned. This 'friend', <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jirayr_Zorthian">Jirayr Zorthian</a>, in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA5U1cpo_sk">an interview</a>, tells of how he and Richard - early on in their friendship - both admitted to admiring <em>Leonardo da Vinci</em>, but for two different reasons. Feynman looked up to 'Leonardo the Scientist', and Zorthian appreciated the refined hand of 'Leonardo the Artist'. So, what to do in this situation? As always, Dick had an idea...</p>
<p>Feynman: <em>"What do you say we become two Leonardo da Vincis?"</em></p>
<p>And with each other's help, they did. Nearly every Sunday - for <em>eight years</em> - they would meet to talk Art and Physics, brining a lot of joy to each other's lives.</p>
<p>I remember hearing/reading, though I fail to recall where, that Feynman's colleges may have gotten annoyed at his many impulsive, time-consuming, non-scientific hobbies (like the art) while working with him - but he, rest assured, had something to say on that too:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Don't get me wrong, he loved science! It's just that he recognised that <em>compassion</em> and <em>lo</em>ve itself were very important too, and that people simply thrived when doing something which gripped their imagination and curiosity. For him, that <em>was</em> often science, but he was a man of many talents. As well as being an Artist in his own right he acted in University theatricals and played the Bongos (and all quite well too). He was, once again, <em>far</em> from your stereotypical 'white-coat' computer of a Scientist.</p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fb/Feynman-diagram-ee-scattering.png/360px-Feynman-diagram-ee-scattering.png"><img class="align-right" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fb/Feynman-diagram-ee-scattering.png/360px-Feynman-diagram-ee-scattering.png?width=360" width="360"/></a>Which was, I guess, part of what won him the <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-facts.html">Nobel prize</a> for Physics in 1965. His funny-looking 'Feynman diagrams' (an example pictured right) allowed calculations of <em>interaction probabilities</em> between different particles to be performed in a graphical manner, essentially getting around the problems conventional Mathematics had with the the task (which many Scientists were used to and stuck with trying to fix).</p>
<p>He was bored of looking at it one way, so he invented another angle. Genius.</p>
<p>And when it came to accepting the aforementioned prize for his brilliance, he was reluctant. One, he didn't want the publicity it brought (but of course, publicly rejecting it would have caused a bigger storm than smiling and waving); two, he (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMaBmik4VYg">really, really</a>) didn't like 'honours'; and three, for him, the real prize was simply the 'pleasure of finding things out', and no shiny medal could match that feeling.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>For this, and so much more, I admire the man as he admired <em>Leonardo da Vinci</em>.</p>
<p>I would have loved to have been able to meet him.</p>
<p>Carnun :P</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>*(Americanisms intact.)</p>
<p>_____</p>
<p>(Reposted from '<a href="http://wp.me/p2VbGO-ru" target="_blank">The Ramblings of a Young Atheist</a>' by the Author.)</p>'Arrogant' Atheiststag:www.thinkatheist.com,2013-04-05:1982180:BlogPost:12892852013-04-05T16:31:39.000ZCarnun Marcus-Pagehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/CarnunMarcusPage
<p><em>Disclaimer: I may not necessarily wholeheartedly stand by everything written below, but it's not like I'm not allowed to poke fun once in a while...</em></p>
<p>___</p>
<p><img alt="folly1" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1335" height="392" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/folly1.jpg?w=300" width="571"></img></p>
<p>It doesn't take long on the internet, or in real life, to come across this old chestnut:</p>
<blockquote><p>'Atheists are so full of themselves, thinking they're <em>right</em> all of the time... So much smug certainty, so much confident piss-taking, so much inconsiderate hate-speech I can't help but…</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Disclaimer: I may not necessarily wholeheartedly stand by everything written below, but it's not like I'm not allowed to poke fun once in a while...</em></p>
<p>___</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1335" alt="folly1" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/folly1.jpg?w=300" height="392" width="571"/></p>
<p>It doesn't take long on the internet, or in real life, to come across this old chestnut:</p>
<blockquote><p>'Atheists are so full of themselves, thinking they're <em>right</em> all of the time... So much smug certainty, so much confident piss-taking, so much inconsiderate hate-speech I can't help but pray for them! God save me.'</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ok, that may be a tad hyperbolic, but the point stands. Why <em>are</em> Atheists always so arrogant?</p>
<p>There are a few reasons for this *observation*, so let's look at each...</p>
<h3>'You think you know everything!'</h3>
<p>I don't know about you, but to me, the person proclaiming absolute physical truths for which they have absolutely zero physical evidence is the one who <em>really</em> thinks they know more than they do. And, no, I don't 'think I know everything'. In fact the more I know, the less I <em>know</em> I know. It's great. It drives my curiosity, for I am always in a state of mind adamant that the best solution to the paradox is to seek out more truth.</p>
<p>Oh, and 'the more I know...' isn't mine. It's Albert Einstein's. Or Socrates'. Or William Blake's (whoever he is). <em>I don't really know</em> - but the point stands...</p>
<p>(<a href="http://wp.me/p2VbGO-lu" target="_blank">Continue reading this post</a>)</p>The Faith/Evidence Paradoxtag:www.thinkatheist.com,2013-03-15:1982180:BlogPost:12751542013-03-15T20:00:00.000ZCarnun Marcus-Pagehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/CarnunMarcusPage
<p><a href="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/dichotomy.jpg"><img alt="dichotomy" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1202" height="300" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/dichotomy.jpg?w=300" width="300"></img></a></p>
<p>To what extent can a religious believer actually <em>argue</em> their faith, reasonably? Not very far, it seems to me.</p>
<p>There are two quantities to consider here, by which all human beliefs can relate back to: Faith and Evidence.</p>
<p>Let's look at the first. Faith, by its very definition, is 'belief without evidence'. It is a gut feeling, and it cannot be proven wrong. Why? Because, for…</p>
<p><a href="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/dichotomy.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1202" alt="dichotomy" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/dichotomy.jpg?w=300" height="300" width="300"/></a></p>
<p>To what extent can a religious believer actually <em>argue</em> their faith, reasonably? Not very far, it seems to me.</p>
<p>There are two quantities to consider here, by which all human beliefs can relate back to: Faith and Evidence.</p>
<p>Let's look at the first. Faith, by its very definition, is 'belief without evidence'. It is a gut feeling, and it cannot be proven wrong. Why? Because, for something to be 'proven wrong' evidence has to come into play, and Faith stays strong regardless of counter-evidence to its claims. When considering God, the only argument one can ever draw is that 'God can't be dis-proven'. Whether this is a strong argument or not for a specific religion's creator is irrelevant - people still use the argument, failing to accept/realise that it can also be applied to Zeus, or Santa...<img class="mceWPmore" title="More..." alt="" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.wordpress.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif"/></p>
<p>The other side of the attempt to justify religious claims is, well, to say that there is <em>evidence</em> for them. I of course disagree with this post-hoc, presumptuous mindset, but I can see why people like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII">Pope Pius XII</a> have, over the years, jumped at the chance to declare that science has proven what they knew all along. It's a simple desperate grasp at reconciliation with reality.</p>
<p>Why do I mention Pius? Well, in response to <em>The Big Bang Theory</em> in 1951 he made this claim:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>"</strong>It would seem that present-day science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the august instant of the primordial <i>Fiat Lux</i> [Let there be Light], when along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, and the elements split and churned and formed into millions of galaxies. Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, [science] has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world came forth from the hands of the Creator. Hence Creation took place. We say: "Therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore God exists!"<strong><br/></strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong><em>(<a href="http://wp.me/p2VbGO-jd" target="_blank">Read more of this post</a>)</em></strong></p>
<p></p>What has Science got to do with Atheism?tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2013-01-25:1982180:BlogPost:12515762013-01-25T18:20:14.000ZCarnun Marcus-Pagehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/CarnunMarcusPage
<p><a href="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/in-science-we-trust.png"><img alt="in-science-we-trust" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-871" height="299" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/in-science-we-trust.png?w=300" width="386"></img></a></p>
<p>I know I do it too often, but to start I feel the need to quote Tim Minchin, yet again. On the very real divide between faith and science, he has this to say:</p>
<blockquote><p>"<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U">Science adjusts it's beliefs based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.</a>"</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not…</p>
<p><a href="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/in-science-we-trust.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-871" alt="in-science-we-trust" src="http://carnunmarcuspage.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/in-science-we-trust.png?w=300" height="299" width="386"/></a></p>
<p>I know I do it too often, but to start I feel the need to quote Tim Minchin, yet again. On the very real divide between faith and science, he has this to say:</p>
<blockquote><p>"<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U">Science adjusts it's beliefs based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.</a>"</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not only is it true, but it rhymes. Kudos to Tim.</p>
<p>So, because of the very nature of the two quantities - science and faith - I see no problem with asserting that Atheism (or Agnosticism) has nothing but <em>all to do</em> with Science's evidence-based philosophy. Put simply: Atheism (or Agnosticism) is the <em>only</em> scientifically supported 'belief system'*, I feel.</p>
<p>That's not to say, as I hear a few of you cry, that there aren't scientists who are <em>also</em> religious; because there <em>are</em>. I'm also not saying that science is <em>reserved for</em> (or only valid if coming from) the religiously unaffiliated, because that too would be absolute nonsense... (<a href="http://wp.me/p2VbGO-dX" target="_blank">Read more of this post</a>)</p>The beauty of sciencetag:www.thinkatheist.com,2012-09-22:1982180:BlogPost:11841972012-09-22T06:55:27.000ZSamuel Sprakerhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/SamuelSpraker
<p>Prior to <span class="font-size-4" style="color: #888888;">science</span>, superstition conquered. Aristotle believed that objects in motion slowed because they simply became "tired." <span style="text-decoration: underline;">God was reason for all, and all was reason for God.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p>Due to brilliant minds we have emerged from these opaque ages of knowledge. Newton enlightened us with mathematical logic in the 17th century. He also enlightened us with knowledge of optics,…</p>
<p>Prior to <span class="font-size-4" style="color: #888888;">science</span>, superstition conquered. Aristotle believed that objects in motion slowed because they simply became "tired." <span style="text-decoration: underline;">God was reason for all, and all was reason for God.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p>Due to brilliant minds we have emerged from these opaque ages of knowledge. Newton enlightened us with mathematical logic in the 17th century. He also enlightened us with knowledge of optics, because of his spooky connection to nature. Copernicus released us from the restrictions of our ego-centrism of believing that we, with our divine morality and knowledge, were indeed the center of the universe. Galileo was arguably the father of science, creating empirical, scientific study to unleash a novel and formidable fight against the suppression of religion, and specifically, Christianity, in the New World. Now we have, in the 21st century, a strangely familiar fight that has been going on for millennia.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In the United States, a self-proclaiming secular nation, a political candidate simply cannot be voted into office if his religious affiliation is not sufficient with the voting public. Yet, Mitt Romney is a Mormon. To any thinking individual, and learned individual, his religion cannot suffice. I'm sure to any individual reading this now, that any religion shouldn't suffice. But the fact that this religion is so recent makes it even more abhorrent and ludicrous.</p>
<p></p>
<p><em><span class="font-size-4">Can we allow this?</span></em></p>My papertag:www.thinkatheist.com,2012-08-13:1982180:BlogPost:11680182012-08-13T22:05:12.000ZChris Leuschenhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/ChrisLeuschen
<p>This is just a little paper I put together. Hope you all enjoy it &amp; please feel free to share =)</p>
<p><br/><a href="http://paper.li/f-1341385511">http://paper.li/f-1341385511</a></p>
<p>This is just a little paper I put together. Hope you all enjoy it &amp; please feel free to share =)</p>
<p><br/><a href="http://paper.li/f-1341385511">http://paper.li/f-1341385511</a></p>The God particle, and what little it has to do with Godtag:www.thinkatheist.com,2012-07-04:1982180:BlogPost:11511472012-07-04T19:49:59.000Zbaziehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/bazie
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;"><br></br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br></br><a href="http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/07/03/en_0703_godparticle_480x360.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/07/03/en_0703_godparticle_480x360.jpg" width="200"></img></a></div>
<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br></br><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Oh how I wish the recently demonstrated Higgs Boson, which bestows mass on particles, had…</span></div>
</div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;"><br/><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br/><a href="http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/07/03/en_0703_godparticle_480x360.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/07/03/en_0703_godparticle_480x360.jpg" width="200"/></a></div>
<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br/><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Oh how I wish the recently demonstrated Higgs Boson, which bestows mass on particles, had never acquired the moniker the 'God Particle'. I suppose there is one benefit: it increases the attention and coverage about a very cool and significant question, just solved, in particle physics. But it does so with the false implication that this has anything remotely to do with God when in reality it counts neither for or meaningfully against the case for a deity.</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br/><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br/></span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br/><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is a precedent here. Many religious people are quite happy to jump on the bandwagon of the Big Bang theory as being the moment of creation they had long asserted happened. Even the Catholic church has, after a few years, accepted the big bang and internalized it as part of their own worldview. Undoubtably, the Higgs Boson will be used in much the same way, especially because it already has the name attached to it, where people will point to it and say that it is God working in this universe, bestowing mass on particles. </span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br/><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br/></span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br/><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It helps, very, very slightly, the atheist position. A common class of arguments for God essentially work by defining it as the God of the Gaps. Whatever science says is considered true, but when science does not know something, whenever there is a 'gap' in our knowledge, God is asserted to have caused it. Evolution might be accepted, say, since there is lots of evidence for that, but abiogenesis, which we understand very poorly, must have been caused by God. Every time we increase our knowledge of the world, as has been done with the Higgs Boson, we necessarily close the size of the gaps, <a href="http://progressiveproselytizing.blogspot.ca/2011/07/religions-changing-domain-of-knowledge.html">giving God a little bit less space to work in</a>. </span></div>
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<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br/>We can sometimes have surprisingly profound conversations with children. Everyone is familiar with the infinite regress where the child asks, in response to every answer, 'Why?' that continues until the tired parent finally retorts 'Because!'. This is not far from how our epistemology is forced to work. We can always ask questions about why the universe is the way it is, and try to explain it in terms of ever more fundamental facts, but at some point one has to throw up ones hands and simply explain that we have reached a level that we can accept as true, but cannot justify further. </div>
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<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br/><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This is the reason that no amount of gap closing ever really helps us. Even though the Higgs Boson may answer the question 'what causes mass?' it only pushes the heirarchy of whys down one level; the next question will be undoubtably be posed: what causes the Higgs Boson? As of yet, since this has no explanation in terms of yet more fundamental causes, we must retreat to the position that this is simply how the universe appears to be. This 'gap' can always be explained, by the religious person, to be caused by God. Ironically, the hierarchy ought not to stop there and one should ask 'what caused God?', but this has rarely dissuaded the religious person in the past and I can hardly expect it would now (<a href="http://progressiveproselytizing.blogspot.ca/2011/09/religion-and-language-part-i-on-deism.html">for more on the infinite regress problem, click here</a>).</span></div>
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<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br/>Scientists also dislike the moniker because it gives undue importance to this particular particle. It is indeed a momentous discovery, as it is the last major particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics and confirms in a major way the veracity of the Standard Model. However, many important questions remain in theoretical physics and we are far from saying we understand the universe. Further, there is not really a meaningful metric in which this particle is vastly more important than those that were discovered before it and do other things of importance to our universe. So it is bequeathed with this special status that it does not quite deserve. </div>
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<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br/><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As someone with a degree in physics, I have always hoped that we would not find the Higgs Boson, at least from an aesthetic sense. I like the mystery of the universe, and I like the idea that the questions remain much bigger and deeper as would have been the case if the Higgs Boson had not been found in the predicted range. We would have had to keep exploring and searching for a model beyond the Standard Model. And, of course, we do have to keep exploring to answer the questions that are deep and mysterious and remain despite this. I have a love hate relationship with the idea that the universe is "solved", even if we are far from that yet. </span></div>
</div>Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: 6 Bones of Contentiontag:www.thinkatheist.com,2012-05-06:1982180:BlogPost:11169292012-05-06T01:24:37.000ZRob Klaershttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/RobKlaers
<p><span style="color: #ff9900;"><b><i>--Ker Than</i>, 2009</b></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #ff9900;"><b>THE EYES OF VERTEBRATES</b></span><br></br> <br></br> <span style="color: #ff9900;"><b>Why Intelligent Design?</b></span><br></br> <br></br> <span style="color: #ff9900;">On November 24, 2009--the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's <i>On the Origin of Species</i>--the theory that new species can arise from old ones through natural selection is still met with some resistance. (Related: …</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #ff9900;"><b><i>--Ker Than</i>, 2009</b></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #ff9900;"><b>THE EYES OF VERTEBRATES</b></span><br/> <br/> <span style="color: #ff9900;"><b>Why Intelligent Design?</b></span><br/> <br/> <span style="color: #ff9900;">On November 24, 2009--the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's <i>On the Origin of Species</i>--the theory that new species can arise from old ones through natural selection is still met with some resistance. (Related: <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091124-origin-of-species-150-darwin-human-evolution.html"><span style="color: #ff9900;">"FUTURE HUMANS: Four Ways We May, or May Not, Evolve."</span></a>)</span><br/> <br/> <span style="color: #ff9900;">Some of evolution's most vocal critics are proponents of "intelligent design," arguing that many structures in plants and animals bear the unmistakable signature of design by a supernatural intelligence. </span><br/> <br/> <span style="color: #ff9900;">Intelligent design proponents say the eyes of vertebrates--including humans and the common snapping turtle seen above--could not have evolved in a stepwise fashion. That's because the eye is made of several interacting parts, and the removal of any one part will cause the entire system to cease functioning. Thus, the argument goes, the eye must have been produced in one fell swoop.</span><br/> <br/> <span style="color: #ff9900;">"If you look at these [evolutionary] schemes, they often very abruptly add a lens or a cornea," said Casey Luskin, a spokesperson for the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based organization that advocates intelligent design. But things don't just appear suddenly in evolution, Luskin said. "You need to evolve things in a step-by-step fashion." (Take a <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/02/darwin-legacy/quiz-interactive"><span style="color: #ff9900;">Darwin quiz</span></a>.)</span><br/> <br/> <span style="color: #ff9900;"><b>Evolutionists Argue ...</b></span><br/> <br/> <span style="color: #ff9900;">Steps in the evolution of the vertebrate eye exist in the fossil record, said Don Prothero, a paleontologist at California's Occidental College and author of <i>Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters.</i> </span><br/> <br/> <span style="color: #ff9900;">"There've been multiple, very well-documented papers showing how complex structures like the eye can evolve in gradual steps from a simple eye spot that is just barely a light receptor all the way to things like the human eye," Prothero said. Intelligent design advocates, he said, simply ignore the evidence. </span></p>
<p><span style="color: #ff9900;">Read more here... </span></p>
<p><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/photogalleries/091123-origin-species-darwin-150-intelligent-design/index.html"><span style="color: #ff9900;">http://news.national</span>geographic.com/news/2009/11/photogalleries/091123-origin-species-darwin-150-intelligent-design/index.html</a></p>The God Hypothesistag:www.thinkatheist.com,2012-03-21:1982180:BlogPost:10828342012-03-21T01:54:03.000ZRob Klaershttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/RobKlaers
<p>Great piece in the Huffington Post today..<span>Posted: 03/20/2012 5:10 pm</span></p>
<p><br></br> Victor Stenger, Physicist, PhD, bestselling author</p>
<p><em>The following article appeared in the March 17, 2012 "God issue" of </em>New Scientist.</p>
<p><em><span style="color: #ff9900;">The party line among scientists -- believers and nonbelievers alike -- is that science and religion are what Stephen Jay Gould called "non-overlapping magisteria." In 1998 the US National Academy of Sciences…</span></em></p>
<p>Great piece in the Huffington Post today..<span>Posted: 03/20/2012 5:10 pm</span></p>
<p><br/> Victor Stenger, Physicist, PhD, bestselling author</p>
<p><em>The following article appeared in the March 17, 2012 "God issue" of </em>New Scientist.</p>
<p><em><span style="color: #ff9900;">The party line among scientists -- believers and nonbelievers alike -- is that science and religion are what Stephen Jay Gould called "non-overlapping magisteria." In 1998 the US National Academy of Sciences issued a statement <a href="http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5787&amp;page=58" target="_hplink"><span style="color: #ff9900;">asserting</span></a> "Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral."</span></em></p>
<p><em><span style="color: #ff9900;">Yet according to a survey the same year, 93 percent of the members of the academy <a href="http://scienceweek.com/2004/sb040102-1.htm" target="_hplink"><span style="color: #ff9900;">do not </span></a>believe in a personal god.</span></em></p>
<p><em><span style="color: #ff9900;">Since about the same percentage of all US citizens say they do <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/147887/americans-continue-believe-god.aspx" target="_hplink"><span style="color: #ff9900;">believe</span></a> in a personal god, it makes one wonder what, if not their science, leads the elite of US scientists to differ so dramatically from the general population.</span></em></p>
<p><em><span style="color: #ff9900;">A majority of scientists at all levels do not believe in any god. Yet most are unwilling to challenge the religious beliefs of others. I am a physicist who, along with others dubbed the New Atheists, is willing to challenge religious belief. The gods worshipped by billions either exist or they do not. And those gods, if they exist, must have observable consequences. Thus, the question of their existence is a legitimate scientific issue that has profound import to humanity.</span></em><br/> <em><span style="color: #ff9900;">...</span></em></p>
<p><em><span style="color: #ff9900;">If humans are a special creation of God, then the universe should be congenial to human life. It is not. Theists claim that the parameters of the universe are fine-tuned for human life. They are not. The universe is not fine-tuned for us. We are fine-tuned to the universe.</span></em></p>
<p><em><span style="color: #ff9900;">After evaluating all the evidence, we can conclude that the universe and life look exactly as they would be expected to look if there were no God.</span></em></p>
<p></p>
<p>You can read the full article here. </p>
<p> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-god-hypothesis_b_1355321.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-god-hypothesis_b_1355321.html</a></p>The Evolutionary Purpose of Male Homosexualitytag:www.thinkatheist.com,2012-03-06:1982180:BlogPost:10739802012-03-06T21:30:00.000ZSkycomet the Fallen Angelhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Skycomet
<p>A recent show on the science channel alerted me to an interesting new hypothesis about the evolution of homosexuality. Contrary to popular thought, it does not appear to be an accident. (If anyone can find documentation about this new hypothesis... let me know). Particularly interesting is the behavior of primate males in family groups. As is well known, apes (such as chimanzees, bonobos, and gorillas) that live in family groups consist of many females, one dominant male that gets exclusive…</p>
<p>A recent show on the science channel alerted me to an interesting new hypothesis about the evolution of homosexuality. Contrary to popular thought, it does not appear to be an accident. (If anyone can find documentation about this new hypothesis... let me know). Particularly interesting is the behavior of primate males in family groups. As is well known, apes (such as chimanzees, bonobos, and gorillas) that live in family groups consist of many females, one dominant male that gets exclusive access to mating with the females, and sometimes one or more submissive males that do not have the right to mate with the females. A new scientific hypothesis suggests that our early ancestors (who may have lived in similar family groups) may have developed homosexuality among these "submissive" males. The sexual behavior of the apes currently being studied suggests that male homosexuality has an important evolutionary advantage in family groups. The submissive males engage in homosexual behavior as a way to satisfy sexual instincts... but the advantage goes further than that. By engaging in homosexuality, the submissive males present themselves as no threat to the dominate male and thus promote group harmony, by discouraging male fighting over mates. Furthermore, these homosexual males provided survival advantages to the family group by helping to protect the females and infants from predators and rival family groups and to find food for the group. In this case, the sacrifice of the genetic survival of one individual gave an enormous advantage to the survival of the group. - Which is something evolution has been known to favor.</p>
<p>Although this particular advantage of homosexuality is obsolete for humans, the homosexual orientation would have survived despite that because our society changes far faster than evolution.</p>
<p></p>
<p>So.. for any homophobes that claim homosexuality is "unnatural" - Au Contraire! It is VERY natural, for some people!</p>Scientific Moralitytag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-12-02:1982180:BlogPost:9535092011-12-02T14:54:31.000ZJohn Galthttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/ElizabethKalmansson
<p>This thought was inspired by this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqaHXKLRKzg">debate</a>, between Dr. Sam Harris and William Lane Craig, and this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxxZqynsBM">debate</a>, between a lot of different people. I freely admit that I probably watch too many debates. Deal with it. <br></br><br></br>To say that the explanation of morality in scientific terms instead of mysterious god terms, detracts from the beauty and significance of it, is the same as…</p>
<p>This thought was inspired by this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqaHXKLRKzg">debate</a>, between Dr. Sam Harris and William Lane Craig, and this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxxZqynsBM">debate</a>, between a lot of different people. I freely admit that I probably watch too many debates. Deal with it. <br/><br/>To say that the explanation of morality in scientific terms instead of mysterious god terms, detracts from the beauty and significance of it, is the same as saying that the explanation in scientific terms of the human sex drive, detracts from its beauty and significance. The fact that we now understand the chemistry and physiology of the human sex drive, does not make it any less powerful, or sexual acts any less meaningful to us. The same can be said of our morality.</p>WantBetterEvidence.orgtag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-10-03:1982180:BlogPost:8829742011-10-03T23:52:17.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
In my last post, I spoke about Outreach Media's attempt to try and justify the idea that the Bible is the best evidence for Jesus' love for humanity, and that this love is the best proof for the existence of God. This poster has a simple image of Jesus on a piece of toast, and the URL <a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/" title="WantBetterEvidence.com">WantBetterEvidence.org</a>.<br />
<br />
Well, me being a curious fellow I decided to go to that website and see what I could make of…
In my last post, I spoke about Outreach Media's attempt to try and justify the idea that the Bible is the best evidence for Jesus' love for humanity, and that this love is the best proof for the existence of God. This poster has a simple image of Jesus on a piece of toast, and the URL <a title="WantBetterEvidence.com" href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/">WantBetterEvidence.org</a>.<br />
<br />
Well, me being a curious fellow I decided to go to that website and see what I could make of it.<br />
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<strong>CLICK</strong><br />
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I am greeted with the same Jesus-toast, which magically fades to reveal the message "IF YOU WANT BETTER EVIDENCE FOR GOD THAN A PIECE OF TOAST". Well it doesn't make sense by itself, so let's scroll down a little shall we?<br />
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<strong>SCROLL</strong><br />
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The site reads:<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong><em>Here's the logic of this site:</em></strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>It's not possible to prove God.</em> <em>But then it's not possible to prove that you aren't dreaming. Actually, <a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/thinkingAboutEvidenceAndProof.html">proofs are notoriously difficult.</a></em> (</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong><em>This site is not about proof,</em></strong> <strong><em>it’s about evidence.</em></strong></p>
Okay well, here I am, hit me up with some evidence for the existence of God. Hoping I could find some actual evidence I delved further into this site, and what I found was not anything new or compelling, but a bunch of links out to sites by other people, such as an essay by <a href="http://www.bethinking.org/resource.php?ID=100" target="_blank">William Lane Craig</a> (and we all know what I think of his <a title="Is God Necessary for Morality? (Kagan vs Craig 2009) part 2" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2011/09/12/is-god-necessary-for-morality-kagan-vs-craig-2009-part-2/" target="_blank">argument techniques</a>), <a href="http://publicchristianity.org/library/topic/biblical/" target="_blank">The Centre for Public Christianity</a>, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/" target="_blank">biblegateway.com</a>, and they say they will be adding more links as more evidence is produced.<br />
<br />
The website itself is made up of four pages; the <a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/" target="_blank">homepage</a> I talked about above, "<a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/thinkingAboutEvidenceAndProof.html" target="_blank">Thinking About Evidence And Proof</a>", "<a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/whyIsJesusTheBestEvidenceOfGod.html" target="_blank">Why is Jesus the Best Evidence for God?</a>", and "<a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/howHistoryCanBeEvidence.html" target="_blank">How can History be Evidence?</a>". Let's look at each of these pages one by one.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/" target="_blank"><strong>Homepage</strong></a><br />
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The main passage on this page after the excerpt above reads:<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>There are those who believe that the best evidence for God can be found in <a href="http://www.bethinking.org/resource.php?ID=100" target="_blank">various philosophical arguments for the existence of God</a>. Others believe that experiencing miracles and signs in their life is the best evidence for God.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>However, this site has been set up by Christians who believe that the best evidence of God is Jesus Christ. That's because the Bible describes Jesus in this way. But 'hang on' you say, 'Jesus lived 2000 years ago'. 'How can we know God based on a man's life recorded so long ago?' If this is the kind of question that bothers you, then you're in the right place.</em></p>
So this site has been set up by people who are not interested in the philosophical arguments for or against the existence of God, only the "evidence" presented in the circular reasoning of the Bible, which states that it is the true word of God, says that Jesus' love is proof that God is real, and that only through it can we know God or Jesus. I'm glad we got that sorted out, I guess I can throw away that huge stack of "literature" by my bed and just read one book. It makes it so much easier if I don't have to think.<br />
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The thing is, this says it is offering evidence for the existence of God, but has already, on the first page, changed the question to "How can I know God?"<br />
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Let's read further shall we?<br />
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<a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/thinkingAboutEvidenceAndProof.html" target="_blank"><strong>Thinking About Evidence And Proof</strong></a><br />
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This page sets out to define what we mean by "proof". They prefer the word "evidence" because... well because their entire argument is that the Bible offers "evidence" of God through Jesus. But they can't prove anything. But what is the definition of evidence?<br />
<div><h2 style="padding-left: 30px;">ev·i·dence</h2>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">noun, verb, -denced, -denc·ing. noun</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof. 2. something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign: His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever.
3. Law . data presented to a court or jury in proof of the facts in issue and which may include the testimony of witnesses, records, documents, or objects.</p>
So the Dictionary provides evidence that the word "evidence" means proof anyway. But this is just semantics, let's go with their definition which means "an indication or sign". From the site:<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>But you can only truly prove something when everyone agrees at the outset on the rules. This is workable in the abstract realm of mathematics but much more difficult when we consider God. In mathematics, conclusions are either right or wrong and follow directly from the rules that are agreed on. But even mathematicians have their disagreements over rules. With God, we need a great deal of humility. After all, we shouldn't presume to even know all the rules, let alone determine them.</em></p>
"Even mathematicians have their disagreements over rules" Well maybe they do, but when they work out what is wrong with a theory or proposition, alter it to better suit the apparent truth of the situation or they throw it away completely. This is how the scientific method works. And of course we can't know all the rules, otherwise there would be no need for scientific discourse.<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>This is why the authors of this website prefer to speak of evidence. Has God given reasonable evidence of Himself that we can trust?</em></p>
But... wait... Has God given evidence of himself? You first need to assume that God exists before you can ask if he has given evidence. The evidence I am after cannot come from God, because I can't first assume he exists in order to give this evidence. It's a badly phrased question. Unless God can testify directly as to his existence, then I can safely assume that ANY evidence brought up for the existence of God is made by a human who has already decided that God does exist.<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Again, as mentioned elsewhere on this site, Jesus's claim and the witness of the Bible writers is that he is just such evidence. It may not be the evidence we expect. But that doesn’t effect its truthfulness.</em></p>
The evidence for God is that Jesus and the Bible claim he exists, and there is NO other evidence? No change to the truthfulness of the claim? Lucky this isn't a court of law, or this "evidence" would be thrown away as hearsay.<br />
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<a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/whyIsJesusTheBestEvidenceOfGod.html" target="_blank"><strong>Why is Jesus the Best Evidence for God?</strong></a><br />
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I could probably take a guess as to what this section might say, but I'll do this properly and see what it actually says, since we're dealing with evidence here.<br />
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This page is pretty much the same spiel from the <a title="&#x201C;Want Better Evidence?&#x201D; &#x2013; Outreach Media" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2011/10/03/want-better-evidence-outreach-media/" target="_blank">Outreach Media poster</a>. I wasn't convinced that Jesus was the best evidence for God by that poster, and reading it a second time, I'm even less convinced. It still strikes me as odd though, this statement:<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Frankly, it's not possible to prove God. But then it's not possible to prove that you aren't dreaming. Does that mean philosophical arguments are pointless? No, they’re not. In fact, Theism (belief in one God) is a very satisfactory explanation of the world.</em></p>
What this means is "We actually have no evidence except what we have already presented, but I'm going to put it to you that you might just be dreaming this whole thing. Therefore, God is true."<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>But the problem with the ‘arguments for God’ is that they don’t introduce you to the particular God who is there. You just end up arguing and discussing the possibility of God existing. Meanwhile the particular God who is there has already revealed himself.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>The God who is there has sent his son, Jesus, into the world so that we can know him. God is a particular person and we meet him in Jesus.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>So, the real issue is evidence. What is reasonable evidence? Is it reasonable to accept the Bible’s record of Jesus as evidence for God? That’s a decision you’ll need to make for yourself. But first of all you’ll need to read the Bible to find out about Jesus. It’s no good making your mind up before examining the evidence.</em></p>
So we have it all wrong, we can't argue about the existence of god if we have the wrong definition of God, it would seem. And again, it asks about evidence, asks if the Bible really is a reasonable proposition, and then says, "Meh, I don't know, you'll have to decide for yourself."<br />
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Wow... compelling.<br />
<br />
Now we get to the meat of the sandwich.<br />
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<a href="http://www.wantbetterevidence.org/howHistoryCanBeEvidence.html" target="_blank"><strong>How can History be Evidence?</strong></a><br />
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We all use history as evidence of past goings on, and there is no doubt that some of the bible are historically accurate, but in this page I can truly see that this whole website is a desperate grasping at straws, giving a confused overview of the situation in the hopes to confuse the readers into thinking it makes sense. First it says the Bible is an historical document, then it say historians are biased. Then it says that we can't possibly know everything about the biases and preconceptions of the people writing the bible, then it says we kinow a great deal about at least one of them.<br />
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Then it asks you to not just read it, but to read it the same way they do, as if it IS true, then make up your own mind. but the real purpose of this website becomes obvious when we read the last paragraph:<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Finally, it’s worth noting that there are a great many well-respected historians who respect the integrity of the Bible authors. In fact, many are even Christian. Perhaps some Internet bloggers and commenters are braver than they ought to be when they heap ridicule and contempt on the Bible and anyone who takes it seriously. So often such sites are lacking in grace and fair mindedness and full of error and fallacious logic. That serious historians don’t interact in such places is usually a testimony to the pointlessness of the exercise. We encourage you to avoid such sites on the Internet and seek out sites where the evidence presented is well documented and the discussion respectful.</em></p>
Oh dear, did I just get dissed for not knowing my stuff? I think I may have! Why I oughta!!!<br />
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So it would seem, the more we scrutinise the people who claim to have the best evidence for God, the more we realise that they actually have near nothing to go by, in fact, only the words of one book. This book says it's true, and we have to believe it because it says it's true. So we end up back where we started. Yes I want better evidence if you are going to claim that evidence will provide the truth of your claim.<br />
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</div>This is a Science Textbook?tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-09-23:1982180:BlogPost:8720262011-09-23T23:49:14.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
Education is everything, and teaching our children not only the facts, but how to determine fact from fiction is crucial for our world. Science and technology basics are some of the more important aspects of a good education, and teaching the scientific method at an early age can help establish a lifetime of good thinking.<br />
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But there are some enemies of accepted scientific fact out there, and like the falsehoods told in…
Education is everything, and teaching our children not only the facts, but how to determine fact from fiction is crucial for our world. Science and technology basics are some of the more important aspects of a good education, and teaching the scientific method at an early age can help establish a lifetime of good thinking.<br />
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But there are some enemies of accepted scientific fact out there, and like the falsehoods told in <a title="&#x201C;Resisting the Green Dragon&#x201D;" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2011/07/16/resisting-the-green-dragon/" target="_blank">The Green Dragon</a>, they wish to get their dirty hands on the children of this world and fill them with fictions based around their own agendas.<br />
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I know nothing about the group calling themselves <a href="http://www.bjupress.com/" target="_blank">BJU Press</a>, but I can be by their byline, "Christ-centered resources for education, edification,&amp; evangelism" that any material they have on their website is going to be hopelessly biased, and probably factually incorrect. But before I make this judgement let's have a look at a sample chapter of a book called "<a href="http://www.bjupress.com/about/look-inside-science-4.php" target="_blank"><em>Science 4 (2nd ed.)</em></a>" and see what we can see.<br />
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Let's start with the Table of Contents (You can click on any of these spreads to get a bigger image.)<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/TOC.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1781" title="_TOC" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/TOC.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="318"/></a><br />
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Okay nothing wrong here, as you would expect with any science primer, there is a bit of information on a broad topic. Let's move on shall we, to the chapter called <em><strong>The History of Moon</strong></em>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/01-02.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1782" title="01-02" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/01-02.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="318"/></a><br />
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This is where it becomes immediately apparent that this book has a biblical agenda, opening with a paragraph from the Bible itself Genesis 1:16. Sewing seeds of doubt about science right here off the bat, this book seeks to discredit science by saying we shouldn't trust what we see, hear and know, but what we feel. In a <strong>"Checkmate Atheists!"</strong> moment, the book denies we can know anything about the moon because nobody was there to witness the formation of the moon, then continues: <em>"What anyone believes about the beginning of things rests on faith, not science."</em> Hmmmm, compelling... Let's move on shall we?<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/03-04.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1783" title="03-04" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/03-04.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="318"/></a><br />
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So we have established that we know nothing, so let's back up our ignorance of everything with some concrete facts shall we? These pages talk about how if you believe the bible then everything is explained by the "Creation Model", but the "Evolutionists" use the "Evolutionary Model" to explain how everything got here. Including the moon. Yes, the moon evolved. Like a Pokemon. It then goes into a few very boring pages about the "three guesses by evolutionists about how the moon began."<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/05-06.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1784" title="05-06" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/05-06.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="318"/></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/07-08.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1785" title="07-08" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/07-08.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="318"/></a><br />
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So after all those lies told to us by "Evolutionists", we now come to the part that tells us what really happened. Well the short answer is: It just happened. Yep that's right, god literally said something and the moon JUST APPEARED from literally nothing. Well, smack me pink and all me a chimpanzee, if that ain't nifty! Let's move on...<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/09-10.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1786" title="09-10" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/09-10.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="318"/></a><br />
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The next section concentrates on how we can know the age of the moon. It explains how "Evolutionists" go to great painstaking lengths of billions of years to allow for the moon to "happen by chance". The Creationists model is much simpler, requires no thinking and proves that the moon is as young as 10,000 years old. Nice haircut too. The equation on page 10 is proof that the moon is young, because, just like your mantelpiece at home, the dust build-up on the moon isn't deep enough to account for an old moon. If the moon WERE old, the dust buildup would be about a kilometer thick! Next proof please!<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/11-12.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1787" title="11-12" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/11-12.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="318"/></a><br />
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Now they ask "Why are the moon?" and come up with some pretty good answers. A: Because God did it. B: Because the night would be too dark for owls and moths without it. And C: Because God did it. See? Makes perfect sense! They round of this page by saying something along the lines of "If things were different, then things wouldn't be as they are now." Infallible logic.<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/13-14.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1788" title="13-14" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/13-14.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="318"/></a><br />
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Now let's do an experiment. Why does the moon move? And How can we use the moon to tell time? Okay great, on we go.<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/15-16.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1789" title="15-16" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/15-16.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="318"/></a><br />
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HOLY CRAP WHAT JUST HAPPENED? The book has gone all dark! I'm scared! You'll know that it's the end of the universe when the sun is darkened and the moon is blood red... kinda like... AN ECLIPSE? Well of course it won;t be an eclipse though, it will be a special eclipse... But wait, when did this book change from being a book about the moon, to being a book about the end of the world? In any case, Jesus will come back then the sky is darkened, and all will be just hunky-dory. And when the moon finally pops out of existence, along with the sun, light will be provided by God and his pet lamb.<br />
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Well I hope you found this science class as informative as I did. I never knew how wrong a person could be until I read this book, and this really does change everything. &lt;/sarcasm&gt;<br />
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In reality, there are people who are using books like this to teach their children about the world and the universe, and it can be nothing if not harmful. It's this kind of ignorance, lies and distortions of the facts that makes the children of today susceptible to being the dumbest and most ill informed generation ever. We have to fight against ignorance like this, whether it comes from a religion or a cult, or a political agenda. This book is an insult to humanity.<br />
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I give it five stars for the laughs.Think Inc Conference Specialtag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-09-19:1982180:BlogPost:8639912011-09-19T04:34:18.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
<p>Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Think Inc conference in Melbourne Australia, the inaugural event, and one that showed much promise with a line-up of speakers which included Professor Tim Flannery, YouTube sensation Christina Rad, activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali (appearing via Skype), poet Shane Koyczan, Professor Neil Degrasse Tyseon, Professor Michael Shermer and political commentator Christopher Hitchens (also intended to appear via Skype).</p>
<p>Unfortunately Christopher Hitchens…</p>
<p>Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Think Inc conference in Melbourne Australia, the inaugural event, and one that showed much promise with a line-up of speakers which included Professor Tim Flannery, YouTube sensation Christina Rad, activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali (appearing via Skype), poet Shane Koyczan, Professor Neil Degrasse Tyseon, Professor Michael Shermer and political commentator Christopher Hitchens (also intended to appear via Skype).</p>
<p>Unfortunately Christopher Hitchens was unable to attend, and his voice was sorely missed.</p>
<p>Below is compilation of short interviews I conducted with attendees and presenters after the conclusion of the panel discussion. Enjoy.
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<p>You can download the mp3 <a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/audio/ThinkInc2012_Mixdown.mp3" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>Of Teapots, Santa Claus and Doubttag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-09-14:1982180:BlogPost:8485912011-09-14T03:49:32.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
It was pointed out to me in a comment this morning about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot" target="_blank"><span><span>Bertand</span> Russell's Teapot</span></a><span>, that theists dismiss the ideas of Santa Claus and The Celestial Teapot outright because of the silliness of the ideas and the incredible unlikeliness that they exist, but fail to see their own shortcomings in judgement about their belief in god or Gods along the same premise. I see why this is, after all,…</span>
It was pointed out to me in a comment this morning about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot" target="_blank"><span><span>Bertand</span> Russell's Teapot</span></a><span>, that theists dismiss the ideas of Santa Claus and The Celestial Teapot outright because of the silliness of the ideas and the incredible unlikeliness that they exist, but fail to see their own shortcomings in judgement about their belief in god or Gods along the same premise. I see why this is, after all, who in their right mind would believe a Teapot could be orbiting the sun? The proposition is ludicrous of course, and it is untestable, unfalsifiable, and not least of all, completely fanciful.</span><br />
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The problem as I see it is that, while the proposition of God is just as untestable, unfalsifiable and fanciful as the idea of a <a title="Russell&#x2019;s Teapot, God and Proof" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2011/08/22/russells-teapot-god-and-proof/" target="_blank">Celestial Teapot</a>, the God believers have has this idea rammed down their throats by society for their entire lives, and been told not to question it by the same authorities and religious texts that make the claim in the first place. Like I said in my last piece, if something like Russell's Teapot were taught in every school to every child, and referred to by parents and others alike, there would be no doubt that it would be accepted as fact that the teapot actually exists. The difference here is of course that the teapot serves no purpose, whereas the God appeals to some of the very basest fears we have about our lives, deaths and the future. People also claim that we owe our very existences to a god or gods, and that by his very own divine words that we should never question that fact. But unlike the teapot, people make assumptions about the world based on the apparent certainty of God's existence, where he teapot only exists in philosophy and atheistic argument.<br />
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If we were to apply the same level of scrutiny to gods as theists apply to Russell's Teapot, the answer would be that there is no proof for his/her/its existence. But even when this is pointed out, it is never enough to convince the true believer. And this is because of the problem of faith.<br />
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As <a title="CJ Werleman Interview &#x2013; Prominent People Project" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2011/08/21/cj-werleman-interview-prominent-people-project/" target="_blank"><span>CJ <span>Werleman</span></span></a> <span>pointed out in my interview with him last weekend, most people who claim to be <span>Christians</span> or Muslims, while they may be familiar with their holy books, have never bothered to try to place these books into an historical context, or question why an author may have written certain passages in a certain way. Who wrote it? What was their intention at the time of writing it? Has it been presented to the reader in these contexts, or has it been interpreted to the reader, either by translation or by a preacher? And if so, what is the likelihood that these texts have been manipulated to suit the wants and needs of the person interpreting it, or the authority over the religion?</span><br />
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People fail to ask these questions of the one thing they claim guides their lives. Surely if something were as important as so many claim in their lives as religion, there would come a point that the questioning of what it really is should come up, but people are told that the victory in this situation is to believe regardless of facts, regardless of doubts and regardless of any historical or social context that may be presented. That's right, the victory over doubt is to ignore the doubt and continue on as if it had never been raised. Name any other situation in life where this is considered to be a virtue. In most cases where doubt surfaces the situation is analysed until either the doubt has proven to be either warranted or unwarranted, but not so for faith. Faith goes against all better judgement of the mind, and it depends upon unerring acceptance of a ludicrous proposition, that just because a person believes something that it is therefore true. If I truly believed that Russell's teapot existed, what would you say about my mental state, given everything else you take as reality in the world?Russell's Teapot, God and Prooftag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-09-14:1982180:BlogPost:8483102011-09-14T03:48:50.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>"If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way."</em> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell" target="_blank">Bertrand…</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>"If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way."</em> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell" target="_blank">Bertrand Russell</a></p>
In an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot#Russell.27s_original_text" target="_blank">unpublished article for Illustrated Magazine in 1952</a>, eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell suggested that if he were to assert that there were a teapot orbiting the sun somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Mars, that people being unable to disprove his hypothesis did not mean that people should take his assertions to be true. He went on to explain that if, however, this teapot was taught as fact to every child every Sunday, that no doubt people would just accept this as "true", and that "teapot disbelievers" would be seen as heretics and hauled off to an asylum, a jail or even killed. This hypothetical teapot came to be known as Russell's teapot, and I have a diagram of it on a tee-shirt just like the figure below.<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/teapot.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1711" title="teapot" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/teapot.jpg" alt="" width="434" height="231"/></a><br />
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<em>EDIT: I do realise the irony in the "Teach The Controversy" message, I know it's used by the misguided in the USA, but there is no controversy to teach! Besides the <a href="http://controversy.wearscience.com/" target="_blank">teeshirts are just so damned cool</a>!</em><br />
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What Russell hoped to point out with this statement is that, rather than the doubter having to disprove a dubious claim such as the existence of a celestial teapot, it is actually the role of the person claiming its existence to then prove that existence. This makes perfect sense, and it is a standpoint that the religious people of the world do not take very kindly to, or they balk at it, block their ears and continue on with life. If a religious person says to you, "There is a God", and you ask them for proof, the answers are always vagaries based around "just knowing", "having a feeling", or to point out all the beauty of the world around us and say that "someone must have made this all." They cannot prove, not in any sense of the word, that God exists, and yet they presume it only natural to assume that anyone who does not believe there is a God is either evil, insane or both.<br />
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The problem with asking for proof of God is that the person who claims that "God is real" has already convinced themselves of this, as if it were a fact that could not be challenged. Either that or they have been indoctrinated into a faith that disallows for the possibility of questioning such a notion. These are very tough nuts to crack, and for the most part, conversations about proving the existence of God usually reach a stalemate where the claimant "just knows". This kind of evidence would be thrown out of any courtroom or any science lab worth its salt, and yet we are expected to allow it in everyday discourse?<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/PipeSmokingRabbit.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1712" title="PipeSmokingRabbit" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/PipeSmokingRabbit.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="379"/></a><br />
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It's very easy to think you know something, simply because that's all you've ever been told, but when your "knowledge" is challenged, you can do one of two things; take it on-board and evaluate it based on its merits, or ignore the new information and continue along your merry way. The believer seems to tend to do the latter if the information goes against their understanding of their belief, and those who do question their faith and conclude that their original standpoint was correct obviously aren't asking the right questions, asking enough questions, or pursuing the question to its logical conclusion. So often it seems that, in the mind of a believer, proof is something that is offered up by "gut feelings", not by observation of the world around them. They take comfort in their willful ignorance surrounding the lack of evidence <em>for</em> a God, because it feels good to think that there is someone watching over you, and taking care of your every move.<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/BigBrother.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-1713" title="BigBrother" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/BigBrother-698x1024.jpg" alt="" width="470" height="689"/></a><br />
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So the burden of proof is on the claimant, not on the unconvinced. You cannot disprove something's lack of existence, but you should by definition be able to prove its existence. But of course, the vagaries continue as if in lieu of real proof, like "you have to believe to know he exists", "God exists because I know he exists", or "God is beyond human understanding." These are irrelevant conclusions, based on circular reasoning, called "special pleading" (count the fallacies!), and again, would never be allowed in a court of law or a science lab. Religion is <em>not</em> immune to the same level of scrutiny with which we analyse the rest of the world, and there is no reason it should be. "Special circumstances" surrounding the existence of God hold no water beyond a "gut feeling" and therefore I do not accept them.<br />
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I think the problem lies in either an inability or an unwillingness to really think about these claims. I make no claims that I can't back up here, using logic, rational thought and facts. If you claim God, you too should be able to go beyond your gut feelings, and present some real tangible information that proves the existence of God, and not try to side-step the issue by offering up half-thought-out assertions and vague claims that require a God's existence for them to be true.Religion is Anti-Intellectualtag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-09-14:1982180:BlogPost:8483952011-09-14T03:48:06.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
The major religions teach people that their version of the history of the world is true. Each of them tells a different story, and yet all claim to be the right one. Of course this can't be the case, there can only be one true path that history has taken, albeit multi-threaded. The odd thing is that Christianity and Islam are rife with messages proposing that one not question the words of the religion, and thereby are not only insulating themselves against a natural tendency to question, but…
The major religions teach people that their version of the history of the world is true. Each of them tells a different story, and yet all claim to be the right one. Of course this can't be the case, there can only be one true path that history has taken, albeit multi-threaded. The odd thing is that Christianity and Islam are rife with messages proposing that one not question the words of the religion, and thereby are not only insulating themselves against a natural tendency to question, but are attempting to insulate the religion against any kind of scrutiny. And this is where the problems really start.<br />
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<img class="alignnone" title="http://midohioatheists.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ting.png" src="http://midohioatheists.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ting.png" alt="" width="439" height="331"/><br />
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If one truly believes that the bible or Koran are true, and the books themselves actively state that all knowledge you need is held within their pages, then there is no reason to seek any further knowledge. This is where religion becomes dangerous, especially in a society like the one we live in today, where single bad decisions made by people in power can mean the death of thousands of people. If they trust in their holy books and take them literally, then bad decisions will ensue.<br />
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This anti-intellectualism is not only to be found in the books themselves, but also in the very words they use to promote their religions with, saying things like "Trust in the Lord", as if to forget all else and just hope that something good will happen.<br />
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But the problem is much deeper than simply believing in God. When disaster strikes an area, or a community, or a country, the main response from the religious is to pray to God for forgiveness, to pray for rain, or to pray for the souls of the afflicted. This goes against any actual seeking for a resolution to the problem at hand. If religious folk really lived in the world I live in, then action speaks louder than prayer. There is no incentive to help people in any tangible sense when just by wishing hard enough to their deity, and if the deity thinks it's a good enough idea, the problem will be resolved or it was never meant to be. It's the antithesis of any kind of constructive action.<br />
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In the real and physical world, if a problem arises, the solution lies in hard work and striving for answers by examining the problem and finding a way to get rid of that problem. In the world of the religious, all personal and communal responsibility is is left up to the will of the almighty with his perfect plan. Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).<br />
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<img class="alignnone" title="http://www.anvari.org/db/cols/Funny_Church_Signs/God_Does_Not_Believe_In_Atheists.jpg" src="http://www.anvari.org/db/cols/Funny_Church_Signs/God_Does_Not_Believe_In_Atheists.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300"/><br />
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I admit, sometimes it's nice to have someone to do the hard work for you, and thinking is hard. I don't blame religion as the only place that actively seeks to keep people stupid in order to control them, but it does play a great role in this debacle.<br />
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Anti-intellectualism is a standpoint against the "know-it-all" scientists in their government-funded ivory tower of knowledge, and people who don't get it really resent being told what fact is. And religion makes a convenient place for people to fall back onto. IN the United States, the religious-based politicians have been taking advantage of this lazy, "someone else will do it" attitude toward society, as outlined in Charles P Pierce's article "<a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0207GREETINGS" target="_blank">Greetings From Idiot America</a>" published in Esquire magazine in 2005:<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>"A 'politically savvy challenge to evolution' is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy Party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. The sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news in it is where it appeared."</em></p>
<img class="alignnone" title="http://img.yawoot.com/f09b606264bb3233b5c1c26a6175c43e.jpg" src="http://img.yawoot.com/f09b606264bb3233b5c1c26a6175c43e.jpg" alt="" width="456" height="683"/><br />
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It really is a worrying trend, and one I am seeing here in Australia too. Using religiously charged language, and a willingness for ignorance, the western world is throwing itself headlong into a position where the charismatic are manipulating the easily led flocks for whatever means they choose. Not only that but they use similar language to that used in the holy books, claiming that only they have the truth, and that the opposition is somehow evil. I find this current trend not only alarming, but increasingly frustrating. I also see no end to it, unless we can start advocating knowledge as a virtue, rather than it being seen as the realm of the privileged and the elite.<br />
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong><em>EDIT: If you want some examples of anti-intellectual bias in the Bible see <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+3%3A5-7&amp;version=NIV" target="_blank">Proverbs 3:5-7</a>, <a href="http://bible.cc/isaiah/47-10.htm" target="_blank">Isaiah 47:10</a> and <a href="http://bible.cc/proverbs/28-26.htm" target="_blank">Proverbs 28:26</a>.</em></strong></p>Denial of an Evolutionary Pasttag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-09-14:1982180:BlogPost:8484922011-09-14T03:46:27.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
You're an animal. In fact, you're an ape! Yes you're an ape, your spouse is an ape, your mother and father are apes, your grandmother is an ape, and every person you know or don't know on the planet are all apes. Megan Fox, Salman Rushdie and Sacha Baron Cohen, all apes. And some of you don't like it. Why is this?<br />
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<img alt="" class="alignnone" height="332" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Weisshandgibbon_tierpark_berlin.jpg" title="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Weisshandgibbon_tierpark_berlin.jpg" width="442"></img><br />
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It's for a few reasons. One being that you look at the other animals in the world and think of them as stupid, or dirty, or food, and you couldn't possibly be like that,…
You're an animal. In fact, you're an ape! Yes you're an ape, your spouse is an ape, your mother and father are apes, your grandmother is an ape, and every person you know or don't know on the planet are all apes. Megan Fox, Salman Rushdie and Sacha Baron Cohen, all apes. And some of you don't like it. Why is this?<br />
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<img class="alignnone" title="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Weisshandgibbon_tierpark_berlin.jpg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Weisshandgibbon_tierpark_berlin.jpg" alt="" width="442" height="332"/><br />
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It's for a few reasons. One being that you look at the other animals in the world and think of them as stupid, or dirty, or food, and you couldn't possibly be like that, could you? Or is it because animals don't have a soul, don't have language, don't have religion, or don't brush their teeth? How could you, a perfect being, one who can appreciate music, art and architecture, a person like you whose ancestors built the Sistine Chapel, how could you possibly be "just an animal"?<br />
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Well my question to you is "How can you deny it?"<br />
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We share over 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. No we did not evolve from chimpanzees, but both humans and chimpanzees did evolve from a common ancestor, an ape, less evolved than either species, and from that point of divergence, we both went upon our own evolutionary paths. Chimpanzees continued to live in the forests, where they developed into what we see now, a social and intelligent ape. Humans took another path and evolved on the grasslands, eventually developing cities, societies and binding societal moral contracts that we all follow.<br />
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The simple fact that you think you could not have evolved from an ape says a lot about you. It says that you think of yourself in high esteem, that you feel you are better than other animals on earth, and most likely, you think that it is God that made you special. Hey, if in fact you deny evolution, you probably think that the world is somewhere between 10,000 and 6.000 years old, and that god made the universe in 6 days.<br />
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But just take a minute, instead of looking at the world around us and seeing what makes us unique, why not look and see what makes us the same. Our chimpanzee cousins have similar body structures to us; arms and hands, heads with two eyes a nose and mouth, ears. They communicate to each other much like we do, albeit in a simplified fashion. They care for their young and the live in communities with tight-knit familial groups. The use simple tools to extract food from hard to reach places. They feel pain, stress, anger, grief. They are apes, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape" target="_blank">so are you</a>.So Much Religious Feartag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-09-14:1982180:BlogPost:8483942011-09-14T03:45:39.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
The power of religion lies in the power of fear; fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of people who are different, fear of God, and the fear that a lifetime of belief may in fact be wrong. Many religious folks might deny the last point, but I'll get to what I mean by that in a minute.<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/BreugelBlindLeadingBlind.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1743" height="307" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/BreugelBlindLeadingBlind.jpg" title="BreugelBlindLeadingBlind" width="430"></img></a><br />
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All people fear dying, but not all fear being dead. As Mark Twain is famous for saying "I was…
The power of religion lies in the power of fear; fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of people who are different, fear of God, and the fear that a lifetime of belief may in fact be wrong. Many religious folks might deny the last point, but I'll get to what I mean by that in a minute.<br />
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<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/BreugelBlindLeadingBlind.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1743" title="BreugelBlindLeadingBlind" src="http://www.martinspribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/BreugelBlindLeadingBlind.jpg" alt="" width="430" height="307"/></a><br />
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All people fear dying, but not all fear being dead. As Mark Twain is famous for saying "I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit."<br />
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It is only natural to want to continue living, after all we are hard-wired to want to continue living. How could a species survive if it weren't? But the fear of dying, the actual act of dying, and the fear of death are two different things. Those who fear death are afraid of a few things:<br />
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• That their life has been in vain, after all what is the point of trying if death is your only reward?<br />
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• The finality of death, after all, life is the only thing they have ever known, so just ceasing to exist as a mind and entity is an unknown which is incomprehensible.<br />
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• The unknown aspect of death. Nobody has ever said definitively what happens after death, and the great chasm of the unknown is more daunting than we dare think about.<br />
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The fact that we all die is a part of life, and we see it all around us. Religion claims to have the answers to the question of what happens to us when we die, and thus has a way to allay the fears of those who are scared of death. "If you follow our doctrine", they say, "you will never die, you will live forever". For some this makes life a whole lot more bearable, meaning they don't have to worry about the end, because for them it's not the end. What this means for those who fear death is a way out, a carrot if you will, the promise of not only life after death, but the best of all possible lives free from pain, free from want and best of all, free from death. It's quite a compelling idea, given that none of us wants to die.<br />
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The second fear is fear of the unknown. This includes the fear of death but runs much deeper. Religion offers no real answers to the origins of life on earth, at least not beyond several fanciful creation stories, each one as different from the one in another religion as imagination can muster, each is mutually inconsistent. Religions say you must believe in the words of that religion or you won't reap the benefits of belief. It follows from this that ideas that are different from the ones in the religious doctrine are shunned and feared. Scientific theories which posit the most likely of circumstances that have led to us as we are now are shunned too, for science says we evolved from earlier species to become human. But this causes even more fear in the believer who likes to think of themselves as special, hand created by God. "How can we be related to <a title="Denial of an Evolutionary Past" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2011/09/05/denial-of-an-evolutionary-past/" target="_blank">mere animals</a>?" they ask. "How can evolution be true if the earth is only 6000 years old?" they ask. "How can <a title="Is God Necessary for Morality? (Kagan vs Craig 2009)" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2011/09/04/is-god-necessary-for-morality-kagan-vs-craig-2009/" target="_blank">morals be an evolutionary trait</a> if God bestowed us with his unchanging an perfect rules?" they ask. It is fear that people may be merely animals that religion takes under-wing and proposes further answers to, giving solace for those who are fearful. The answer from religion is "God made you, you are special, you deserve to be celebrated."<br />
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The third fear is the fear of those who are different. Religions like Christianity say to love their neighbour, yet cause people to become insular, fearing those who don't believe the same as they do, fearing those who don't act according to their particular doctrine, or fearing those who don't believe in a god at all. They are told that unbelievers and believers in different faiths stand to undermine the fibre of their society with their ungodly ways, and should be either converted or should be shunned. In the worst of these situations, the "infidels" should be killed to protect the honour of the religion or religious person. This fear, because it is backed up by the religion, becomes a xenophobic bigotry toward gays, women, foreigners (especially those of different religions who look "weird") and people who practice different faiths from their own. While once this insularity was a good way to ensure the bonds inside a tribe, in this day and age it simply gets in the way of a peaceful multifaceted society.<br />
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Religion tells us to fear God, because it is God who will judge us when we die. When we fear God, the religion that says we must do so also has to be feared, because the religion is the one that claims to have the rulebook that God has written for us. God is all powerful, and if you go against his rules you will not be able to quell your fear of death with the promise of afterlife. God sees and knows you better than you know yourself, so you'd better fear him because there's no lying to him. Fear God because he will be the one to judge you when you die.<br />
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Religions teach us not to question them. As noted above, they are the authority of God himself, and therefore the words he speaks through his book/s are to be treated as truth. But if any of the rules or stories or rules go against anything you might feel in conscience, you have to fear these feelings and push them down. Questioning religion is harmful to the religion, so therefore they say within the doctrine that questioning is bad. These are seen as temptations, and religions even invented an agent of temptation, Satan or a devil or demon figure, to make you fear these feelings. Religions hold your true judgements down, telling you they are wrong. "Don't believe in <a href="http://bible.cc/proverbs/3-5.htm" target="_blank">your own judgement</a>, believe only in the words of your religion". Most claim that not following a religion is being closed-minded, but when you follow only a doctrine, how can you possibly be the open-minded person you claim to be. The fear that they could be wrong is in itself something that the religions hold sway over, calling it a test, and claiming that the only way to salvation is to push down any doubt and simply believe.<br />
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As you can see many of the fears that religion claims are intertwined, and overlap in many areas. The fact remains that fear is the single most powerful tool religion has to control people. Once you recognise this, maybe it will be easier to go beyond the shackles of religion.Why Single Out Christianity and Islam?tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-09-14:1982180:BlogPost:8484912011-09-14T03:45:01.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
<p>I've had a few people ask me lately "Why don't you pick on other religions apart from Christianity and Islam? After all, there are thousands you could choose from." Well the answer is pretty simple, but threefold.<br></br> <br></br> Firstly, I live in Australia, which is a predominantly Christian nation. Upwards of 60% of Australians identify themselves as Christians (according to the 2006 census). Most of the first westerners to arrive here were Christian, and that tradition has been carried on…</p>
<p>I've had a few people ask me lately "Why don't you pick on other religions apart from Christianity and Islam? After all, there are thousands you could choose from." Well the answer is pretty simple, but threefold.<br/> <br/>
Firstly, I live in Australia, which is a predominantly Christian nation. Upwards of 60% of Australians identify themselves as Christians (according to the 2006 census). Most of the first westerners to arrive here were Christian, and that tradition has been carried on from that point onward. Many Christians like to identify Australia as a Christian Nation, while denying the fact that for some 40,000 years previous, the traditional landowners of this country followed their own ancient tradition of storytelling and ritual. And while it is true that our legal system was set up by people who may have been Christian, this does not in fact make our laws Christian laws.I am familiar with the Christian faith, and it is Christianity that I see rammed down the throats of the school children in Australia, not Zoroastrianism or some other faith. This familiarity with Christianity is why they are a topic of many of my criticisms.<br/>
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Secondly, Christianity is also the largest single religion in the world at around 33%, closely followed by Islam at around 21% (according to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html">adherents.com</a>). This means that just over half of the world is a religious adherent of an Abrahamic tradition. (Note: according to the percentages at adherents.com, "Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist" account for around 16% or people worldwide.) If I were to focus my attention on, say, indigenous Australian traditional religious beliefs, while just as fanciful, I would be only addressing a very small part of the whole.<br/>
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<img height="222" width="480" alt="Abrahamic religions versus Indian religions worldwide - Wikipedia" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Abraham_Dharma.png" title="Abrahamic religions versus Indian religions worldwide - Wikipedia" class=""/><br/>
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Thirdly, because the Abrahamic traditions are the most adhered to religions worldwide, their influence and actions are wide and far-reaching. The are in governments and the military, in our schools and in out communities. People in power worldwide subscribe to either one of these religions. Many decisions of political and social importance are made according to, and in the name of, the major Abrahamic religions, and the religions themselves can be seen by many as an extension of patriotism, nationalism and country-hood. Those in power know this and use the emotionally charged religious doctrines to win people over, to urge them to fight to defend their freedoms and their nation from the influences of the "other" religion, depending upon which side you happen to come from.<br/>
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<img height="222" width="480" alt="Christianity and Islamic distribution - Wikipedia" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Christ_Islam.png" title="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Christ_Islam.png" class=""/><br/>
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In the map above we see the relative distribution of Christianity versus Islam worldwide. The Middle-East is obviously the area with the highest level of Islam adherents, and also the place where many of the world's major conflicts are taking place. Christianity, however seems to be more heavily adhered to in South America and Europe than in the "Christian Nation" of the USA, and yet the leaders of the USA still use rhetoric pertaining to "God's will" when invading Middle-Eastern countries on "peacekeeping" missions, when it's pretty clear they are actually after oil to keep the fuel-hungry country afloat.<br/>
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Of the remaining third of the world that does not adhere to the Abrahamic traditions or secularism, the religions practiced by these people are either of the Asian tradition (Buddhism, Hindu, Sikh, and Chinese Traditional), or are adherents to small and splintered beliefs like Zoroastrianism, Rastafarianism and Scientology. If I were to draw my attention away from Abrahamic traditions, I guess the next biggest target would have to be Buddhism and Hindu, however the countries that predominantly follow these religions are not the ones that wield the balance of power at this time.<br/>
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So my focus remains on Christianity and to a lesser degree Islam (although some would say that Islam is a far more deserving target than Christianity). To me, however, all religions are as guilty as any other; of indoctrination of children, of willful ignorance about the universe, of sectarian violence and hatred, and of promoting the supposed wants of a higher power over the interests of humanity and the rest of the world.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it." -Terry Pratchett</em></p>An Atheist and Spiritualitytag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-08-09:1982180:BlogPost:7664462011-08-09T09:31:58.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
I've been thinking lately about spirituality. No, I'm not suggesting I am about to join a cult, take up tantric meditation or go on a vision quest. What I have been wondering is, is there any basis or evidence for a spiritual or metaphysical part of human existence?<br />
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Firstly, I think we need to define what it is we mean by "spirituality". If it means we are all inhabited by everlasting souls, that our existence on earth is a stepping-stone to the afterlife, or that our personalities and…
I've been thinking lately about spirituality. No, I'm not suggesting I am about to join a cult, take up tantric meditation or go on a vision quest. What I have been wondering is, is there any basis or evidence for a spiritual or metaphysical part of human existence?<br />
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Firstly, I think we need to define what it is we mean by "spirituality". If it means we are all inhabited by everlasting souls, that our existence on earth is a stepping-stone to the afterlife, or that our personalities and memories live on as ghosts or spirits after death, then I think we can discount "spirituality" right away. There is no evidence for such a state of being, only anecdotal stories from mystics, shamans and holy-men. If, however, we talk of spirituality as a connectedness we feel for other humans, other animals and the physical world in a way we can't explain (yet), then maybe there is room for such a description. I'll come back to this idea later, but first let's look at the semantics of the idea of "spiritual".<br />
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<a href="http://www.samharris.org/" target="_blank">Sam Harris</a> suggests that "spirituality" is a natural part of humanity, that somehow humans have evolved to have transcendent thoughts. He sees the spiritual part of life as just another facet of being human, as almost a necessary part of life. But far from it being a religious state, he can see it as a way to end religion. In his book The End Of Faith from 2004 he writes:<br />
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"Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith."<br />
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It's a nice thought, but I'm not sure I agree with the idea of "spirituality" as such.<br />
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My friend and author of the blog <a href="http://near-earth.com/" target="_blank">Near Earth Object</a>, Paul Fidalgo surmised the use of the term thus:<br />
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"(The term 'spirituality' is) a shorthand for brain-based experiences that we have yet to fully explore scientifically, so I'm okay with it."<br />
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This is more along the lines of what I'm talking about.<br />
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There are two things here I think should be noted. Firstly, the use of the word "spiritual" is a misleading premise, because the word is fraught with connotations from religion, magic and "crystal-gazing" hippy talk, and by its wishy-washy and intangible nature, it makes the term "spiritual" such a subjective term that it ceases to have any real value in this context, except as an admission of being stumped for a better word. Secondly, I have only used the term "spiritual" here because I can't think of a better term, but over the course of this blog I hope to be able to devise a better descriptor. For me using the word "spirituality" is uncomfortable, and for the reasons I've stated above, I've come to think that it is indeed the wrong word for what I am talking about here. What makes me particularly uncomfortable is the idea that "spirituality" implies "higher states of consciousness", a statement which I think is a little too far on the hippy side of the fence.<br />
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<strong>So what is it I am talking about here?</strong><br />
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Well let's clear away the detritus of the priests and the muddiness of magic, and see what facts are available. What do we know about humanity that can help us to come up with an answer to the question of "spirituality"?<br />
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<li>Humans are a product of evolution, and all the evidence suggests that our bodies and brains have evolved over millions of years for us to be what we are. Human culture has developed alongside mental and social processes, an as a result we experience feelings and emotions such as empathy. Mirror-neurons in the brain make us feel the pain and joys of others, allowing for better social bonding. Bonding with others makes for a stronger community, which is definitely beneficial to the whole group. Societies, cultures and countries are merely larger applications of the group empathy advantage.</li>
<li>As far as I can discern, everything that we see, feel, touch, taste, think etc. is a product of the thinking brain. The way we react to situations comes from the brain and it's processes, so spirituality, if it exists, does so inside the human brain also.</li>
<li>While altered states of consciousness have been recorded and tested under scientific scrutiny under the influence of mind-altering drugs, during mediation, trance-like states and hypnosis, there is nothing to suggest that these states are "higher" than normal thought, merely different. There are many ways this altered state has helped people to make realisations that have led to advances in maths and science, but to use the word "higher" implies that what is actually an impaired or rewired brain as working in an advanced or better mode than normal brain function. The question is, are these so-called "higher" processes actually "higher" or simply the way our brains react to chemical and physical changes?</li>
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The other question is, what is metaphysical? By definition it means "beyond physical", but is this even possible? Again, things we once thought of as unknowable and explained as spiritual have turned out to be explainable, so what are the chances that "spirituality" will turn out to be "beyond the physical?<br />
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I'd like to venture that "spirituality" is a way to describe a natural process in the brain that we don't yet understand, rather than something metaphysical. What makes me say this? Well, evidence does. All signs point to the brain being our connection to the world, translator, interpreter and decoder of our lives and the physical world around us. The fact that we don't yet understand it is the reason we hold it in a place of reverence and fear, and as the source of "woo". Just as we once believed epileptic fits to be possession by the devil, we will one day look back on our notions of "spirituality" with a truer understanding of what makes the human brain, therefore humanity, tick. Rather than labelling the so-called spiritual "higher" we will one day call it what I think it really is, something that is different from our current ability to understand.<br />
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Where, then, does that leave us? If it's not metaphysics I'm talking about, then what is it, and what label shall we give it? Could we instead use a less heavily laden term?Science Channel Chat?tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-07-24:1982180:BlogPost:7496772011-07-24T17:17:25.000ZMalloryhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MalloryEPynn
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<p>I'm hoping I'm not the only one here who watches the Science Channel. They're on an upswing of really good, quality shows after a few years of drivel. I'm very excited for all the new shows. I'm wondering if anyone would like to join me in watching/discussing them after new episodes have aired. We could find a time after the show to discuss, or chat while watching the show. I prefer having people to talk with during the show, but I'd be willing set up a chat for a later date. There…</p>
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<p>I'm hoping I'm not the only one here who watches the Science Channel. They're on an upswing of really good, quality shows after a few years of drivel. I'm very excited for all the new shows. I'm wondering if anyone would like to join me in watching/discussing them after new episodes have aired. We could find a time after the show to discuss, or chat while watching the show. I prefer having people to talk with during the show, but I'd be willing set up a chat for a later date. There are several shows I'm interested in, including Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, Wonders of the Solar System (with Brian Cox), and a new show airing in August, Curiosity. Curiosity's first episode is titled, "Did god create the universe?" Should be interesting! I'm also open to other shows/channels/books/movies/what-have-you.</p>
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<p>I've got Skype, Yahoo, Trillian, and Google Talk.</p>
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<p>This also sort of ties into a journal entry I did about being stuck in my house, going crazy. Having people to talk to about these things would most definitely keep me sane!</p>
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<p>If you're not comfortable sharing your messenger information, feel free to message me. I mostly want to get an idea of who would be interested in something like this. :)</p>"Resisting the Green Dragon"tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-07-19:1982180:BlogPost:7444882011-07-19T00:40:22.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
I found this video while sorting through my G+ stream yesterday, and found it too alarming to not blog on the subject. This is surely enough to get your hackles up, and it should concern not only atheists, agnostics and skeptics, but every thinking human on the planet. This is surely going to be of concern in the future.<br></br>
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The video opens with this statement:<br></br>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>"In what has become one of the greatest deceptions of our day, radical environmentalism…</em></p>
I found this video while sorting through my G+ stream yesterday, and found it too alarming to not blog on the subject. This is surely enough to get your hackles up, and it should concern not only atheists, agnostics and skeptics, but every thinking human on the planet. This is surely going to be of concern in the future.<br/>
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The video opens with this statement:<br/>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>"In what has become one of the greatest deceptions of our day, radical environmentalism is striving to put America, and the world, under its destructive control. This so called Green Dragon is seducing our children in our classrooms and our culture. Its lust for political power now extends to the highest global levels, and its twisted view of the world elevates nature above the needs of people, of even the poorest and the most helpless. With millions falling prey to its spiritual deception, the time is now to stand and resist."</em></p>
This video is a 12 minute promo for the DVD series Resisting The Green Dragon, produced by The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, who describe themselves thus:<br/>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>"The Cornwall Alliance is a coalition of clergy, theologians, religious leaders, scientists, academics, and policy experts committed to bringing a balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development. The Cornwall Alliance fully supports the principles espoused in the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, and is seeking to promote those principles in the discussion of various public policy issues including population and poverty, food, energy, water, endangered species, habitat, and other related topics."</em></p>
<em>Please take the time to watch the video (12 minutes) then read what I have to say after the jump...</em><br/>
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NOTE:<a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/video/GreenDragon.mp4" target="_blank">You will need to download the video as it's not supported here at TA</a> or <a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2011/07/16/resisting-the-green-dragon/">watch it at my website</a>.<br/>
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This video highlights just how dangerous the religious movements in the USA are becoming. Using the dual threats of "global control over everything we do" and the "destruction of the Christian way in America, this video shows how radical religious movements are using misinformation to try and scare the American and world populi into believing that environmental concerns are not only anti Christian, but ultimately harmful to everyone worldwide. It is appealing to an emotional response, not unlike the response people in Australia are having over the proposed Greenhouse Carbon Tax, using half-assed assessments of the situation, embroiled with Tea-Party rhetoric to deliver its message of doom. It is a three pronged attack on reason, using fear of losing freedom, fear of losing the Christian way of life, and fear of conspiracy, and it aims to bring about a notion that environmental concerns are nothing but Big-Brother hiding facts in order to procure world domination. These people are devoted to the idea that Creationism, above all else, is the only truth, and this is very dangerous, as Michael Shermer states in his book "Why People Believe Weird Things";<br/>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>"There is considerable harm in teaching creation-science as science because the consequent blurring of the line between religion and science means that students will not understand what the scientific paradigm is and how to apply it properly.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Moreover, the assumptions behind creationism comprise a two-pronged attack on all the sciences, not just on evolutionary biology. One, if the universe and Earth are only about ten thousand years old, then the modern sciences of cosmology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, paleontology, paleoanthropology, and early human history are all invalid."</em></p>
This kind of misinformation is not only scary, but it is potentially very destructive, especially when we consider that America is one of the worst polluters per capita, and one of the biggest consumers of resources per capita on the planet. Once the American public is convinced that the environmentalist push in the world is based on a want of the powers that be to control their lives, there is little that could convince them to buy and consume less, and to help preserve this planet for future generations. This is precisely where religion, and religious dogma, causes me the most concern; misinformation allows for bad decision-making, and from bad decisions come bad outcomes.<br/>
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Go check out the website <a href="http://www.resistingthegreendragon.com">www.resistingthegreendragon.com</a> (This is not a live link as I don't want them seeing hits come directly from my here. Copy and paste the link to see the madness there.)<br/>
<br/>
<em>NOTE: If you want to watch the video as the website would like you to, the website makes you first enter your email address to be delivered to a password protected Vimeo page, where, if you enter the word "RESIST" as the password, you can view it. I took the liberty of liberating the file and hosting it myself so that you didn't have to go through that process yourself.</em>Wow! We have to learn from the Europeans!tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-07-07:1982180:BlogPost:7325042011-07-07T09:04:30.000ZSassan K.http://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/SassanK
<h2 id="hdr_article-headline">Europe Plans 45% Boost To Science Investments, Funded By Slashing Farming Subsidies</h2>
<cite><span class="by">BY</span> <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/user/148610" title="View user profile.">Kit Eaton</a></cite><span class="timestamp">Wed Jul 6, 2011</span><br />
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<p><img alt="NASA's James Webb Space telescope" src="http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/610-science-spending-UK.jpg"></img></p>
<p>Screw austerity: The E.U.'s science spending, which is running at about US$79 billion for the current 2007-2013 period, is…</p>
<h2 id="hdr_article-headline">Europe Plans 45% Boost To Science Investments, Funded By Slashing Farming Subsidies</h2>
<cite><span class="by">BY</span> <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/user/148610" title="View user profile.">Kit Eaton</a></cite><span class="timestamp">Wed Jul 6, 2011</span><br />
<div id="article-top-wrapper"><br class="clear"/></div>
<p><img src="http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/610-science-spending-UK.jpg" alt="NASA's James Webb Space telescope"/></p>
<p>Screw austerity: The E.U.'s science spending, which is running at about US$79 billion for the current 2007-2013 period, is getting a boost to $114 billion for 2014-2020. <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110705/full/475014a.html" target="_blank">The E.U.'s proposal</a> recognizes that only by spending money on innovation and future tech can income growth be assured. Apart from this 45%+ boost in science cash, the rest of the E.U.'s roughly trillion-dollar budget remains flat.</p>
<p>The proposal still awaits approval by the E.U.'s parliament and member states, but just getting this far is a milestone. The next phase is to forge spending into the next generation of the E.U.'s Framework Programme, which is its main research spending entity, to produce a plan called Horizon 2020. The spending shift has been championed by E.U. research commissioner Márie Geoghan-Quinn, and means that the share of the E.U. budget portioned out for scientific research will eventually double from its 4.5% figure in 2007 to 9% in 2020.</p>
<p>How will Europe pay for it? This is actually the biggest trick being pulled off: More than €4.5 billion would be transferred from the E.U.'s farm subsidies program, the Common Agricultural Policy. This is the enormous pile of cash paid by E.U. authorities to farmers each year to keep them in business, to keep food products rolling off the production line, and to keep fields fallow--as well as to diversify their businesses. Depending on where your <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jun/26/eu.politics1" target="_blank">political feelings lie</a>, the CAP is either a majestic insurance policy that ties nations together and ensures E.U. autonomy in food produce, or a monstrous and embarrassing carbuncle that sees billions of euros wasted on an industry that should evolve. Whichever way you look at it, the CAP eats up so much of the E.U.'s funds that even this smallish redistribution of cash is a revelation.</p>
<p>The new science money will be spent on all sorts of initiatives, big and small. One of the first areas gives research priorities for projects on "healthy aging." One previous beneficiary that won't see additional cash, however, is the impressive ITER European fusion reaction experiments--destined to perhaps replace traditional nuclear power as an infinitely more sustainable and non-polluting alternative--which will now have to earn extra cash from member states individually.</p>
<p>Given that a report this week <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/for-europes-start-ups-silicon-valley-still-calls-2011-07-06?dist=beforebell" target="_blank">has suggested</a> that European technology startups still see the best location to begin business as Silicon Valley, rather than locally, this news couldn't have had better timing. And though Obama has been criticized for <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/science-eco-friendliness-trimmed-obamas-stimulus-fund" target="_blank">not</a> <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=obama-spotlights-science-in-his-sta-2011-01-26" target="_blank">necessarily</a> delivering on his <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/obama-promises-science-centric-eco-friendly-presidency" target="_blank">science-centric promises</a>, perhaps the E.U. can achieve more reliable results.</p>Thought Experiment - What if God appearedtag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-06-27:1982180:BlogPost:7198752011-06-27T03:43:33.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
<p>My brother, an atheist like me, posed to me this humorous thought experiment, and I thought it was worth playing the game and posting it here:</p>
<p> </p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>God - the bearded white guy who looks a lot like me (he wears more robes than I do) - turns up on Earth, having decided to prove his omnipotence once and for all.</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>He turns up everywhere you go, in all your recent photos, and in all the morning…</strong></p>
<p>My brother, an atheist like me, posed to me this humorous thought experiment, and I thought it was worth playing the game and posting it here:</p>
<p> </p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>God - the bearded white guy who looks a lot like me (he wears more robes than I do) - turns up on Earth, having decided to prove his omnipotence once and for all.</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>He turns up everywhere you go, in all your recent photos, and in all the morning shows. He agrees to meet Mr Obama, and he is recorded by numerous news cameras as having said that he disapproves of Ms Gillard's living in sin. (God declines to visit Alan Jones due to allegations of repressed homosexuality.) When your Grandma says "grace" at the Xmas dinner table, and she finishes with "Thank the Lord", God appears and says "No worries, love".</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>God goes through MRIs, Xrays and CAT scans, as well as standing on a set of scales. All systems indicate that he is THE REAL GOD.</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>You are a critical thinker, and now God has well and truly been proven to exist - he's eating your Doritos as we speak! Do you continue to deny the possibility of God, or do you resign yourself to the FACT that he exists and start giving Him the praise that He deserves?</strong></p>
Interesting! Okay first we have to establish a few things:<br/>
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1. This God is Abrahamic God.<br/>
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2. It would seem from this description that the bible is the true world of God.<br/>
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3. This God really wants praise.<br/>
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I guess, if he really could prove himself to be God, then I would not be able to say any longer that "no God exists". But here's the problem: How could we determine the true identity of a God anyhow? What test could there possibly be to truly determine that this guy, beard and all, is the one true God, straight from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and not just a member of a sufficiently advanced race of interstellar alien? We haven't set up a series of experiments designed to test for "God-ness" so the experiments would have to be pretty special indeed.<br/>
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In order for me to be truly satisfied that there is a God, let alone that this Charlton Hestonesque character is that said God, he'd need to be able to convince me that he was the creator of the universe, and I think the only thing he could do would be to do just that: create the universe, in front of my eyes. It would be like the universe's most amazing magic act! Then again, I would remain skeptical as to the authenticity of this creation, and besides I would probably be destroyed, ripped apart atom by atom, as the new universe emerged.<br/>
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I guess, assuming there were an experiment that was flawlessly designed to detect God-ness, and if he passed, then I would see no reason not to admit he exists. However, if the God you describe is the God of the bible, as described in the bible, I wouldn't worship him either, but instead might want to sit down with him and tell him where he's gone/going wrong with the world.<br/>
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I guess the real question is, does God like Doritos?Your Truths, Our Factstag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-06-21:1982180:BlogPost:7135272011-06-21T06:30:00.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
To paraphrase Michael Specter in a <a href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2010/04/28/michael-specter-the-danger-of-science-denial/" target="_blank" title="Michael Specter: The danger of science denial">TED talk</a>, "You are entitled to your own truths, but you aren't entitled to your own facts." This is a poignant message and one that deserves further exploration.<br></br>
<br></br>
<em>(Edit: the actual quote, as pointed out in comments on my blog was “...And listen, everyone’s entitled to their…</em>
To paraphrase Michael Specter in a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2010/04/28/michael-specter-the-danger-of-science-denial/" title="Michael Specter: The danger of science denial">TED talk</a>, "You are entitled to your own truths, but you aren't entitled to your own facts." This is a poignant message and one that deserves further exploration.<br/>
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<em>(Edit: the actual quote, as pointed out in comments on my blog was “...And listen, everyone’s entitled to their opinion – they’re even entitled their opinion about progress – but you know what you’re not entitled to?</em> <em>You’re not entitled to your own facts. Sorry, you’re not.” For the purposes of this article, I'm going to use the word "truth" instead of "opinion" for anything that a person holds to be true, i.e. "personal truth" or "individual truth" as opposed to "universal truth" which is what i would call "fact".)</em><br/>
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<strong>Firstly, how can we determine what is a truth and what is a fact?</strong><br/>
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A personal truth will stem from what a person experiences as their life, their own personal experiences. The weight we give to different situations will depend upon what our own personal truths are less than upon the facts.<br/>
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I'll use an example of the human condition to illustrate a point. If a person lives their entire life in a war-torn village where the daily activities include gathering water from a well five kilometers away, negotiating minefields and the occasional band of militia, then the truth for them is that life is difficult and dangerous. It is a truth that living day-to-day is a struggle against dehydration and death. Most people reading this will never have to experience a life like this.<br/>
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Likewise, most in the first world will live with the occasional discomfort of job insecurities, familial problems, and illnesses, but for the most part our world consists of a daily routine of getting up, going to work, coming home, eating and sleeping. This is our truth.<br/>
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Even more striking is the truths people experience in their own minds. I read an article from <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227033.600-praying-to-god-is-like-talking-to-a-friend.html" target="_blank">New Scientist</a> (article preview) in which a study shows that the brains of people who believe in god see their conversations with him in the same way they would with a friend or family member. The brains of these people see no difference between their God and a real person who they know well, even though the experience of speaking to a corporeal entity is a physical phenomenon, not merely mental. But just cause a person believes something to be true, even if their brain thinks it is real, it does not necessarily make it fact. Oliver Sacks, in his book "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat" target="_blank">The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat</a>" talks of cases where, either through Aquired Brain Injury or mental illness, people's brains make mistakes, and not just fleeting mistakes, but persistent mistakes of identification. The man who thought everyday that his wife was a hat lived his life in this reality as a truth, and nothing could change this except for maybe some therapy which allowed him to see hats in a new light. But the wife was not, in any sense of the word fact, a hat.<br/>
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You and I have the ability to distinguish what the brain thinks of as "hat", and our truths reinforce this fact. Those who see the universe as existing without need or evidence for a god also make this distinction between the "human friend" some see God to be and the "flesh and blood" friends and family we interact with daily.<br/>
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There is also the tendency for the brain to reinforce truths and realities it already recognises, rather than building whole new ideas every time information is presented to us. If this weren't the case we would spend all our time building new information and never learn. The downside of this is that this happens just as much with a delusional brain as with a healthy brain. In it's most closed form it presents as <a title="Denial, Cognitive Dissonance and Confirmation Bias" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2010/07/07/denial-cognitive-dissonance-and-confirmation-bias/" target="_blank">Confirmation Bias</a>, where an already dubious idea is backed up by equally dubious supporting evidence, and thereby strengthening the resolve of a belief held by an individual. This is where a big problem presents itself, because when a person reinforces their truth with more of the same it becomes embedded, and thereby much harder to work around.<br/>
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Based on individual truths, what facts can be garnered? Is it a fact that life for humanity is one of dodging mines and bullets, or one of relative stability? Is it a fact that a man's wife is now a hat? One could say that the answer to that lies in taking on-board all the available information about lifestyles, about economies and about political climates of all the world's populations and making a determination based on what humanity as a whole is experiencing. But if this were the case, then from whence comes God, and if so many people believe in it does this make it a fact?<br/>
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Well, no, because fact is independent from individual truths, individual beliefs and individual realities. A fact is a fact no matter where, how or to whom it is presented. A fact lives at the end of all questioning, and is reproducible and testable, and in theory falsifiable. There is no room for individual interpretations within fact, and yet people do interpret facts in different ways, depending upon their own truths and desired outcomes.<br/>
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<strong>So where does this leave us?</strong><br/>
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Is it enough to simply say that "Truth is subjective, fact is objective"? Well, not really, because the counter argument asks "How do we determine fact without personal truths getting in the way?"<br/>
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I would be interested in your ideas on this topic. Please leave your comments and thoughts below.Curiosity didn't kill the cattag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-06-14:1982180:BlogPost:7040042011-06-14T04:26:29.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
<p>My cat, spooky, has gone missing. He's been gone for 5 days now, and while I am quite worried he may have been hurt, or worse, killed or caught by the cat-catcher, I still hold hope that he's about, and that he will return soon. He's done this before, but never for so many days, and I suspect he may have another home out there somewhere. Damn cats and their curiosity! It never comes to any good! Whenever he goes missing, I can't help but think of the saying <strong><em>"Curiosity killed the…</em></strong></p>
<p>My cat, spooky, has gone missing. He's been gone for 5 days now, and while I am quite worried he may have been hurt, or worse, killed or caught by the cat-catcher, I still hold hope that he's about, and that he will return soon. He's done this before, but never for so many days, and I suspect he may have another home out there somewhere. Damn cats and their curiosity! It never comes to any good! Whenever he goes missing, I can't help but think of the saying <strong><em>"Curiosity killed the cat."</em></strong></p>
<p><br/>
While the <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_killed_the_cat#Origin">origins of this phrase date back to the 16th Century</a>, people still use this phrase today as a warning against getting involved needlessly in situations, where surely the only outcome can be bad. I have seen this idea also used to discredit science, learning and knowledge, with the premise being, "Curiosity killed the cat, so don't ask too many questions."<br/>
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The quest for knowledge for the sake of knowing is unique among the animal kingdom to humans, in that we won't be satisfied to just have the information presented to us, but will seek more knowledge. Our curiosity is essential to the progress of humanity, for without it, and without asking how something came about, we stagnate. And there are those who would prefer we do just that. Religions, mainly Christianity and Islam (which is ironic since <a target="_blank" href="http://www.scienceandyou.org/articles/ess_06.shtml">much of the progress introduced into Europe</a> in the 7th Century came from the Islmaic Moors), rely upon a strict discipline of unquestioning faith, and even go so far as to discredit knowledge as evil or sinful. The bible, in its opening chapter discredits knowledge as a curse bestowed upon mankind for going against the word of God, and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.humanismbyjoe.com/Bible_Opposes_Knowledge.htm">again in later chapters</a>, where we are told to not trust knowledge, and not trust the teachings of man.<br/>
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It is in the interest of religious groups to not question the authoritative stance of the Bible and Koran, for if one is to trust wholeheartedly in the religious texts, then they are predictable and easier to control. The more one questions religious tenets the less viable they become, and the smaller the possibility of God becomes. But this anti-intellectualism is not coming strictly from religion, and the anti-intellectualists are raising up their placards and screaming "Grow a brain Morans!" at the top of their voices.<br/>
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In Charles P. Pierce's 2005 Esquire piece titled "<a target="_blank" href="http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0207GREETINGS">Greetings from Idiot America</a>" (later adapted and expanded into his <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926145">novel</a> "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free"), he outlines some of the examples where education, knowledge and expertise are under fire as being elitist, and therefore not relevant to the majority of Americans. Not only that, but those without knowledge and expertise see it as a "showing -off", where smart people flaunt their smarts in front of those less educated as if to say "You wouldn't understand." The rise of Sarah Palin as the voice of <em>Idiot America</em>, with her anti-intellectual stance is but a symptom of this trend which is becoming all to apparent in the USA.<br/>
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The <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement">Tea Party</a> in the USA is spreading to other countries, with groups appearing in Australia and the UK, spreading their half-assed messages of fear and disenfranchisement around the globe. Again, they prey upon people's fears and uncertainties, and they speak loudly.<br/>
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This trend has extended to Australia also, where it seems the education system is <a target="_blank" href="http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/37454.html">geared toward mediocrity</a>, where everyone wins, rather than one of competition and striving for betterment. The disenfranchised minorities are rising up and claiming political statuses, forming political parties such as Bob Katter's "<a target="_blank" href="http://www.ausparty.org.au/">The Australian Party</a>", which preys upon people's fears of being controlled too much by government actions, to Pastor Danny Nalliah's "<a target="_blank" href="http://riseupaustraliaparty.com/">Rise Up Australia Party</a>", focusing on media spurred fears of multiculturalism and the supposed rise of Islam in Australia. And of course we can't forget <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Hanson">Pauline Hanson</a>, and while I'm never really sure what she's talking about and where it comes from, all we know is she's frustrated and sick of it. And for every rational, reasonable and thinking journalist or blogger, there is an <a target="_blank" href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/" title="Andrew Bolt">equally irrational, emotional and "from-the-gut" writer out there</a> trying to discredit progress in the name of this anti-intellectual spirit. They seem to be getting louder too!<br/>
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The anti-intellectual movement has had some other <a target="_blank" href="http://www.hccc.nsw.gov.au/Publications/Media-Releases/PUBLIC-WARNING-/default.aspx">more insidious side-effects</a> here in Australia also, in the guise of The Australian Vaccination Network. This network claims to be an authority on the supposed dangers of vaccination, and the incredibly tenuous link to the development of autism in children. They cite a "peer-reviewed" paper by the discredited <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield">Doctor Andrew Wakefield</a> on their website, and use the fears of new mothers to spread their messages, claiming that the science of vaccination is wrong. While we can shake our heads at some anti-intellectual movements and feel sorry for them, this one has proven to be quite harmful. Because so many people have chosen to opt-out of vaccination of their children, we are now in the grip of an outbreak of pertussis (whooping cough) and the even more alarmingly, a resurgence of rubella. Mark my words, if we don't get onto this soon, we will also see the return of polio in mainstream Western society also. Please <a target="_blank" href="http://www.hccc.nsw.gov.au/Publications/Media-Releases/PUBLIC-WARNING-/default.aspx">read this media release</a> about the AVN and the damage they are doing.<br/>
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While the anti-intellectual spirit of politics preys on the fears of minorities, such as having a fair-go, whether petrol prices are going up, whether Islam will take over from Christianity as the main religion in Australia (and the USA), and whether people's voices are being heard, the anti-intellectual spirit of religion stems from a need to control. Control of people by disallowing their nature need for knowledge is the one most powerful tool that religion has, and given the state of technology these days, where information is found at your fingertips, it's no wonder these religious groups are making so much noise.<br/>
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Earlier this week I tweeted <strong><em>"Curiosity didn't kill the cat. Curiosity led us to discover the universe!"</em></strong> Curiosity has allowed humanity to make some of the most momentous discoveries about the universe and ourselves, to cure diseases, to fly to the moon and to feed whole populations. We need to continue to be curious about nature, about science, about culture and humanity, and we need to continue to question everything. We must not become complacent with pseudo-knowledge, or settling on our fears as facts just because someone else feels the same way. We need to use our heads, not our gut, to think, after all that is what it's there for. And we need to break down this anti-intellectual spirit that is showing its face in politics and being bolstered by the blind faith of religion.<br/>
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I hope my cat comes back. Curiosity may have gotten the better of him this time, but I praise him for his pioneering spirit.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>This blog was also published at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.martinspribble.com/2011/06/13/curiosity-didnt-kill-the-cat/">Martin S Pribble</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/637749-curiosity-didn-t-kill-the-cat">Richard Dawkins</a> websites.</em></p>I believed weird thingstag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-05-29:1982180:BlogPost:6825202011-05-29T23:43:15.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
Humans can believe some pretty strange things. I have met people who claim to be able to see my "aura", and that depending on the "colour and shape" of this aura, they can make a determination of my physical or mental health. I've met others (actually sometimes the same people) who claim that by laying their hands on me, they can cure me of whatever ails me, from sore muscles to an upset stomach. Even stranger, I have met people who claim to be able to see into my future by "interpreting the…
Humans can believe some pretty strange things. I have met people who claim to be able to see my "aura", and that depending on the "colour and shape" of this aura, they can make a determination of my physical or mental health. I've met others (actually sometimes the same people) who claim that by laying their hands on me, they can cure me of whatever ails me, from sore muscles to an upset stomach. Even stranger, I have met people who claim to be able to see into my future by "interpreting the cards", using the random placement of tarot cards as a "glimpse into the other side". All of these are bogus of course, and when tested under reasonable scientific conditions, will fail like superstition does.<br />
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What is interesting is that people seem so ready to believe these things. Many who I have met in life that believe these things have no affiliation with organised religion or dogma, instead following "their own path of self discovery". Often times when a person believes in the powers such as crystal gazing, they will also believe a whole gamut of equally implausible things, like those mentioned above, and things like iridology, positive thinking and vision questing. Most people I knew who believed in this stuff have grown out of it, and moved on to become quite rational in thought. Myself included.<br />
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Yep that's right. For a long time I believed in the "great hidden powers" of these things, with the attitude that "there is much more to the world than we will ever see, and much of it is hidden just beyond our sight." Let me explain.<br />
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In my years after high-school and before I began university (this is where I had much of my superstition squeezed out of me) I was on pretty much of a loose end. I was not really sure what I wanted to do with life, and my friends were the same. This life involved a fair bit of pot smoking and introspection, festivals on mudflats in the country, protests against the war in Iraq (the first one) and lots of doing not much except sitting around and sharing ideas. We all have one thing in common, and that was that we believed in the world of supernatural energies, lay-lines and pyramids, past-lives, future lives and shared energies of people like telekinesis and ESP. We walked into these situations of experimentation fully expecting the results to pan out, to give us a peek into the hidden world of the spirit, and of course we were proven "correct". When I say "correct" I mean that we perceived a result. Let me give you an example.<br />
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In a Reiki situation, when a "master" lay hands on me, I expected to become relaxed. He would ask me if I could feel the energy of the universe flowing through me. Of course this made me aware of my body, the blood coursing through my veins, heartbeat, breathing and skin sensations. I was convinced that this was "cosmic energy" and that it was coming from the universe. Not outer-space, the WHOLE universe. I would become relaxed, and any muscle soreness would appear to have gone away, attributed of course to the juju of the universe. On retrospect of course I realise that it was just me becoming self aware and relaxed enough to let my muscles un-knot, and through the guiding "suggestions" of the Reiki "master". They would always speak in soothing tones, light candles and incense (of course giving these trappings more significance than they were due, claiming that they somehow "purify the air" or "remove negative energies".) These situations are conducive to relaxation, so it's no wonder that I was open to suggestions.<br />
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Many of the new-age trappings from the 90s (of course none of it originated then, it all came from shreds of "old mysticism") use these same techniques of relaxation and guided suggestions to make the subject (me) feel something they hadn't noticed before, or rarely notice. A lot of these techniques involve long hours of sensory restriction, sitting still, being silent, meditating and the like. It's funny how things like this can cause the mind to play tricks on us, especially when we have an intended outcome such as a vision or healing or relaxation. There's no denial that experiences were had, but after years of playing around with this stuff I came to realise that it all takes place in the brain.<br />
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When the senses are subjected to stimuli such as this, and combined with a desired outcome, it's easy for us to feel like the outcome is reached. And it makes perfect sense that this should be the case, for if we withdraw inwardly not only is the brain allowed to wander, it will wander, seemingly on it's own, but there is always an intention.<br />
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After five years at university where I read a lot of history, popular science and literature, it became clear to me that while the ability to relax is useful, that's all it is; relaxation. Far from becoming cynical about new-age quackery, I came to understand that it's all as real as a person wants to believe it to be. In the brain anyhow.<br />
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So I find it easier to understand where a person of religious belief is coming from. Religious belief has the added bonus of being foisted upon us from a young age, with most people being indoctrinated as children, and the backing of society which largely says it's not only okay that you believe, in many cases it is expected of you to believe (depending of course upon which system of belief you happen to be born into, all others are claimed to be false).<br />
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I think that anything we call "magic" or "mysticism" can be explained eventually, either by science or by critical examination. I can explain a lot of the new-age stuff I used to believe in so deeply as tricks of the mind brought on by altered states of consciousness, and the rest I can explain away by wishful thinking. The problem lies with the fact that people want to believe in things, people want to believe in souls, afterlife, ghosts, Reiki, crystal healing etc. Why would anyone ever want to dispense with an idea that they want to be true? When the belief promises solutions to the questions life throws up at you, why wouldn't you choose to believe them? Even more powerfully, when the belief offers solutions to the one biggest unknown in life (which is death), and claims to conquer this unknown, you can see how the carrot becomes even more tempting. The notion of confirmation bias backs this idea up.<br />
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But when it comes down to it, none of us are immune to strange beliefs. What are some of yours?Science is wrong!tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2011-05-06:1982180:BlogPost:6486652011-05-06T01:32:24.000ZMartin Pribblehttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/MartinPribble
Every religion says it is the right one, and there is no way that they can all be correct. In fact, I'd go so far to say that they are all wrong. But... science is wrong too. (!?)<br />
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In science and other practices that view and measure the natural world people readily admit that they have only some of the answers to the mysteries of the universe. When new information presents itself, that information is added to the knowledge already gathered, an if it means altering the information we already…
Every religion says it is the right one, and there is no way that they can all be correct. In fact, I'd go so far to say that they are all wrong. But... science is wrong too. (!?)<br />
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In science and other practices that view and measure the natural world people readily admit that they have only some of the answers to the mysteries of the universe. When new information presents itself, that information is added to the knowledge already gathered, an if it means altering the information we already have to make the new information make sense, then so be it. When new information presents itself, the old is added to and altered to suit the new. This is how we make progress in society.<br />
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This adding is not done with a slapdash attitude either. It is done in a way that makes our understanding greater, not by simply tacking an idea onto the end of an already established understanding. We observe, we record, we test, and we adapt.<br />
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In religion it is the opposite. Either new information is ignored when it can't fit into the scriptures, or the information is bent to fit with the ideas in the scriptures. Nothing moves or changes very often, and if it does, it means a splintering of the believers into new sects or versions of the scriptures, one that better suits the people who believe. The Church of England was created so that King Henry the 8th could marry many wives, which was convenient for him. The Protestant Church was created because some didn't agree with the way the Catholic Church interpreted the Bible. The same is true in Islam, Hindu and even Buddhism.<br />
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Religion is like a vacuum, where very little new information is added, and if it is, it's done reluctantly an within the blinkered ideals already set out in the scriptures or tenets of the religion. This is not how society makes progress.<br />
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The fact remains that nobody is right. Science etc. admits this freely, and rather than seeing this as a failing of the scientific method, we see this as an opportunity to find out more, to see the gaps in our knowledge and collectively fill them with facts. In religion, the unknown is far too often thrown into the "too hard" basket, and slapped with the label "God did this".<br />
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Science is an open system, where established rules take new information and add to knowledge. Religion is a closed system which ignores new information if it doesn't back up already held beliefs, at the expense of progress.<br />
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I know this is not all entirely true of all religious people, nor all scientifically minded people, but the systems in place, science and religion, are by their nature, as I have described.<br />
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The truths held in science are universal, while the truths in religion are conditional and sectarian. Science sits apart from personal interpretation, whereas religion is all about interpretation. Science adapts while religion stagnates. There is no such thing as Islamic science or Christian physics, science is the same for all of us because it's laws are universal. Religion relies on the belief of it's people to continue, and it's laws are arbitrary.<br />
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What science and religion have in common is that they are both, on the surface, ways of seeking truth. One is effective and delivers, while the other placates our seeking with the illusion of truth. The fact is that none of us have all the answers, but I can guarantee that science finds more answers than all of religion combined.